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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



tCfjrottsii tfje ^leiie 

A Group of Picked Sayings 
Shortly Told 



BY 



ADDISON BALLARD, D.D. 

Author of " From Talk to Text " and 
"Arrows; or, Teaching a Fine Art" 




H^^ 



NEW YORK 

ROBERT GRIER COOKE 

INCORPORATED 

MCMVI 






UBRARYofCONQRESS 
Two Copies ReceIV8(f 

DEC 29 1906 

Copyrljfht Entry . 

<£>6r-5/. ^<?<^^ 

CLASS ^ XXCm No. 
COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT 1906 BY 
ROBERT GRIER COOKE, INC. 



TO 

MY SON 
HARLAN HOGE BALLARD 



npHE AUTHOR is pleased to acknowledge the courtesy 
* with which the Editors of The Independent, The New 
York Observer, Christian Intelligencer, Christian Work and 
Evangelist, Christian Observer, Interior, The Presbyterian, 
Sunday School Times and Christian Endeavor World have 
given their cordial consent to the use here of such communi- 
cations by the author as have, from time to time, appeared 
in their respective periodicals. 



MOTTO AND MOTIVE 

If, free from all that morbid distrust which complains 
that the world is cold and unfeeling, we go forward to meet 
it with open hearts of sympathy, and ready hands of help, 
we shall surely succeed, both in making the world better and 
happier and in ourselves being made better and happier 
by the world. 



CONTENTS 
I 

PAGE 

Three Travelling Companions i 

The Unchangeable Past i 

The World's Yesterday i 

New-snuffed 2 

Turned^ but Not Stopped 2 

What We Can 3 

The Patience of Growth 3 

Write to Me about Heaven 5 

Charitable to Worms 6 

Not Complaining^ but Next Door to It . . . .7 

Deeper than Regret 7 

God's Love for the Sinless 7 

Faith Tested by Doubt .... 1 .. 8 

A Test of Power 8 

An Ingot of Love 10 

Fancy for Fact 10 

Safety in Truth-telling 11 

The Impracticables 11 

Making the Best of a Mistake 13 

How Cathedrals do Not Grow^ and How Oaks and 

Lilies Do 14 

Inanimation 15 

What Comes from Looking 16 

Instantaneous Verification .17 

Praying Overdone 17 

Out-of-Place Resolutions 19 

The True Confessional 19 

The Ring and the Feast 20 

Unfailing and Undiscouraged 20 

Whirled 21 

The Troubleman 22 



CONTENTS 



The True Master .23 

An Unsuspected Name 24 

Giving Envy the Slip 24 

Bible Perspective 26 

Hidden Links 28 

Eyes that See 28 

Life^ Lord over Death . . 29 

II 

A Sure Guide and Goal 30 

Sight-worship 32 

Bible Kakography Z3 

The Right of Way 34 

Easily Stopped •. .34 

A Counterfeit of Life 35 

Gain in Beauty; Loss in Power 35 

Heaping and Growing z^ 

Taking In and Giving Out z^ 

The Pterigium of Prejudice 38 

Sifted 39 

Prying Under 40 

^'Aha*' 40 

Consistency in Wrong 41 

Remembered and Forgotten ...... 42 

An Unsafe Venture 43 

A Dishonor to God's Love 44 

Welcome Home -45 

No Second-birth Suicide 46 

A Hidden Danger 46 

Intercession for the Ill-deserving 47 

Saved 48 

Created to Good Works 49 

Growing ; Not to Grace^ but in It 50 

Something to Eat 50 



CONTENTS 



Climbing 51 

The Spider's Foot for the Spider s Web . . . .52 

The One Thing that Counts 52 

Not " It," but " I " 54 

The One Temptation 55 

Quitting His Observatory 57 

III 

A New Chime of Old Bells . . . . . .59 

Neighborliness Next to Godliness 59 

An Unwelcome Gift 61 

A Footpath Venture 64 

Weaned 66 

Two Summers 6S 

Perfect at Last 70 

An Original Guest 71 

Varnish and Vitality 7:^ 

Apart and in Secret 75 

Vulture and Dove yy 

The Lower Ennobled by the Higher . . . .79 

" Isms " and " Ists " 81 

Going Through the Motions 82 

The First and Second Births 83 

Unused Spices 85 

The Successful Plea 88 

Common-sense, Faith and Ignorance .... 89 



IV 

A Religion of Facts 93 

The Multitude of the Saved 96 

Enjoyment Following Surrender 98 

The Silent Life 100 

Prayer Endings . 104 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

A Lesson in Christian Warfare . . . . . 107 

Saving Himself and His Hearers 108 

Eddy and Stream no 

Beyond Peradventure iii 

Reintroductions 112 

The Cross a Symbol of Obedience 114 

Opportunity^ the Test of Character . . . .117 
The Weighing of a King . . . . . . .119 

Paul's Quarrel with Peter 121 

Not a Hoof Behind . . . . . • . . 124 

From Abel to Zacharias 126 

Self-harming Haste 128 

Our One Concern 133 

A Quick Turn from Sorrow to Joy 139 

Satan's Fall Foreseen 143 

Love's "Finally" 144 

V 

From Cell to Song 147 

Best of All 147 

Recompense 147 

At Home to Stay 148 

Just as Thou Art . . 149 

The Haystack Centennial: 1806-1906 .... 150 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



The essence of aphorism is not so much inge- 
nuity as good sense brought to a point. 

JOHN MORLEY 

A weighty adage may sometimes do more 
good than a labored discourse. 

MATTHEW HENRY 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



THREE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS 

It is but a short distance that Duty travels alone. 
She is not long on the road before she overtakes Love, 
and it is then not long before Duty and Love overtake 
Joy, and the three become thereafter inseparable com- 
panions and continue and complete their heavenward 
journey together. 

THE UNCHANGEABLE PAST 

Moment by moment the fluent future stiffens into 
the unchanging and unchangeable past. With solemn 
exactness the pulseless hand of Time is shaping the 
enduring mould and the story of our lives is flowing 
into it, fixed in the eternal stereotype of God's omni- 
science. 

THE WORLD'S YESTERDAY 

The Clock of History beats centuries instead of 
seconds, and the millenniums of men are but the yes- 
terdays of^ God. 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

NEW-SNUFFED 

When a certain New England divine, whose evan- 
gelistic zeal was taken by his brethren as a sign of 
doctrinal unsoundness, was asked pointedly if he were 
not one of the " New Light " theologians, he answered 
promptly, " No, I am not a * New Light ' ; I am only 
an old light, new-snuffed." 

TURNED, BUT NOT STOPPED 

Half-way between North and South Williamstown, 
Mass., the impetuous current of Green River running 
northward strikes at right angles against a ledge of 
immovable limestone. The obstruction, however, does 
not lessen in the least the volume, force or freedom 
of the stream. Cheerfully complying with this unmis- 
takable command that it proceed no farther in its for- 
mer direction, without a moment's cavil or complaint, 
the stream instantly turns to the east; and although 
appearing confused and agitated for a moment, yet 
a few rods farther down we see it flowing on just 
as freely and rejoicingly as ever, watering without 
stint and freshening with beauty the new banks within 
which Nature has seen fit to direct its course. 

" The Spirit suffered them not " was the rock 
against which two gospel preachers once ran when 
attempting to enter a new field of their own selection. 
But although turned back, they do not complain. 
The headlong current of their zeal suffers not the 
slightest abatement. It finds no difficulty in turning a 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

short corner. With the full force of its original im- 
pulse it flows across the ^gean into Macedonia, where 
its course is marked by new churches springing up 
along that unsought but divinely-selected coast. 

Next to love as an incentive to Christian labor is 
the assurance that God gives shape and turn to our 
endeavors and determines the form and measure of 
our success. 

WHAT WE CAN 

The old farmer is still busy. Too feeble longer to 
swing the scythe, he rakes after the cart. 

The out-worn railway engineer is not wholly retired 
at once. He is given an easier position, and is glad 
to take it. 

The overtaxed teacher teaches fewer subjects and 
fewer hours. That prince of teachers. President Mark 
Hopkins, of Williams College, continued to meet some 
of his former classes to almost the last day of his 
fourscore and five years. 

Compelled by physical infirmity to forego his or- 
dinary pulpit ministrations, the retired preacher may 
yet address by pen and press an unassembled multi- 
tude far exceeding in number his, for a time, sorely 
missed Sabbath congregation. 

If no longer what we would, then not only sub- 
missively, but cheerfully and thankfully, what we can. 

THE PATIENCE OF GROWTH. 

Madame D'Arblay once wrote to her son in college, 

3 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

" We never touch others where we study to show that 
we are touched ourselves. You once wrote me a 
letter so very fine that if it had not made me laugh, 
it would have made me sick. Be natural and you will 
be sure to please without wasting your time." 

A famous picture which it took Sir Joshua Reynolds 
but ten hours to paint, represented twenty years of 
study and practice. Dr. Lyman Beecher, on being 
asked how long it took him to compose a certain mas- 
terly discourse, is said to have nonplussed his ad- 
miring parishioner by the reply, " To write that ser- 
mon ? Why, sir, it took me thirty years ! " 

Precocity is risky. The sapling trying to swell at 
once to the size and glory of an oak would only, by 
the bursting of its bark, put back by so much its normal 
growth. 

Look at the scalloped, delicate lines of the sea-beach. 
They tell the limits of the spreading surf, where lay 
the frill of the apron which the breakers shook out 
upon the strand. They seem, at first, like the marks 
which he who leaps for mastery makes as soon as his 
feet strike the ground. But these lines more than 
tally the successive achievements of shallow, rival 
waves. The waves themselves were not born of either 
the moment or the shore. They are not the outcome 
of a spasmodic summoning up of an ambitious energy. 
They register for the wide, unfathomable sea; the sea 
which fills great submarine valleys, and covers hidden 
mountain peaks, and kisses the rim of the great At- 
lantic basin on either hemisphere. Small and delicate 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

as those lines are, they are here and could be here 
only because of what the ocean is, and of what the 
moon is, and of what the tides are. They are not a 
performance, but the tokens of a great life, a sublime 
actuality, a true and mighty existence. 

In like fashion, should each man's mental, ethical and 
spiritual endeavors be — not a series of ambitious, con- 
vulsive performances, but — a life, the spontaneously 
growing fruit of a good tree — representing honestly 
Tennyson's 

'' The fruitful hours of slow increase." 

WRITE TO ME ABOUT HEAVEN 

As any life, so any and every death means a great 
deal to Jesus. " There goes a funeral procession," 
says one. '' That's nothing," says the other, '' funerals 
somewhere in the city every day of the year." Very 
likely some indifferent by-stander said that about the 
funeral procession that went out of the gate of the city 
of Nain. But it was not Jesus who said it. His heart 
was with the widowed mother's heart breaking over 
the loss of her only son. Nor do I think it was for 
that mother's sake only that Jesus stopped the bier 
and restored her son to life. It was to assure us that 
there is nowhere and never a death, no, not even of 
a little child, that does not mean a great deal to Him. 
He consoles us by instructing us how to interpret the 
open grave of any dear child of God. " What are you 
digging that hole for ? " I ask the King's gardener. 
" To bury this seed in," he replies ; " a seed from the 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

King's conservatory — a small, weak thing, but from it 
rises a beautiful flower for the King's palace." 

Such was the unshaken and comforting belief of the 
friend who, writing to me of the loss of one very dear 
to her, said, '' Write to me, but do not write a letter 
of condolence. Write to me about heaven." 

CHARITABLE TO WORMS 

Many persons like butterflies who are not fond of 
caterpillars. You try to reason with them. You 
ask, '' Do you not know that this despised caterpillar 
will be a butterfly one of these days ; a beautiful, airy, 
winged creature ; a floating, flying flower ? " 

" It may be an incipient butterfly, for all I know 
about it," the answer is, " but just now it is a worm 
and nothing but a worm; an ugly, crawling thing. 
Butterflies I like well enough, and when this worm, if 
it ever does, gets to be a butterfly, I will like it, but 
not before." 

Here is a man who is a Christian, you are told. He 
doesn't act much like a Christian, though. He is irri- 
table, impatient, narrow, conceited, discourteous, proud, 
arrogant, envious; or he is stupid and awkward; or 
he is gloomy and unsocial. But his name is on the 
church records and you are told that you must love 
him, not because he is perfect, but because he is a 
Christian and because he will be a beautiful, a sancti- 
fied character, one of these days, in heaven. You reply, 
" Well, when he gets into that shape, I will love him, 
but not before." 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

It is no doubt true that we shall admire and love 
some persons in another world that we do not greatly 
admire or love in this. 

But just here, a caution; don't let those who are not 
butterflies themselves, as yet, take too much upon 
them as if they were. They, too, are still in the ver- 
micular stage, and about themselves are some things 
not altogether pleasing or perfect. Let worms be char- 
itable to worms. 

NOT COMPLAINING, 
BUT NEXT DOOR TO IT 

I do not complain ; at least, I do not mean to com- 
plain; yet I often say or think somewhat gloomily: 
'' This seems to be a part of my trial and I suppose 
I must bear it." But would I say that were I truly 
and wholly submissive? 

DEEPER THAN REGRET 

True repentance, as distinguished from mere worldly 
sorrow, means a quick, clean cutting off of the old 
sinning and sinful self, leaving no ragged edges of 
shamed and floundering regret. 

GOD'S LOVE FOR THE SINLESS 

Monotony breeds inappreciation. We forget God's 
goodness to us from our having come to take it as 
a matter of course. The father's love for the " elder 
son in the field " was as true and as strong as was his 
love for the husk-eating prodigal. It would, however, 

7 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

have remained unexpressed but for the younger son's 
repentance and return. It would have been exercised 
and expressed in the same way of forgiveness toward 
the elder brother, had he been the one to leave, and 
the younger to stay. 

It is because the angels understand this better than 
did the complaining elder brother that there is joy 
in heaven over one repenting sinner, more than over 
ninety and nine that need no repentance. 

Mercy comes as a new after-thought. It is the 
fulness of love discovered to itself. 

FAITH TESTED BY DOUBT 

Victor Hugo speaks of darkness as a quickener of 
the eyesight : *' As the pupil of the eye dilates in the 
night until it at last finds day, even so the soul dilates 
in misfortune until it at last finds God." 

Jesus foresaw the doubt and perplexity into which 
His disciples would be plunged by His death. He knew 
that Cleopas would say long before he said it : " We 
trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed 
Israel." This doubt and anxiety He might have easily 
enough prevented. He might have " opened their un- 
derstanding to understand the Scriptures" before His 
resurrection as well as after. It was by being left for 
a while in doubt that they learned to trust in the dark. 

A TEST OF POWER 

Taking up to read for the first time Mrs. Browning's 
poem, " The Seraphim," I find it introduced thus : " It 

8 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

is the time of the crucifixion, and the Father of the 
Crucified One has directed toward earth the angels of 
His heaven, of whom all have departed except Ador 
the Strong One and Zerah the Bright One. The place 
is outside the shut heavenly gate." 

It coming to me that I shall better appreciate the poem 
if I first try my own hand at it, I close the book and 
cast about for some theme in history less momentous, 
but nearer and more familiar. The outbreak of our 
Civil War suggests itself as a fitting parallel, a nation's 
life in peril, the call for volunteers, the quick answer 
of a host of young men, who at once quit happy homes 
for bloody battlefields. Of a given neighborhood two 
only are staying behind. Loving alike their country 
and alike sympathizing with their brothers already in 
the field, the stronger of the two asks impatiently of 
the other, '' Why stand we here all the day idle ? '' All 
the weaker can do at first is to assent passively to the 
questioning reproach of the stronger; but, unable at 
length to hold out further against so manly an appeal, 
he yields, and both start for the scene of conflict. 

I now find myself heart to heart with the poet, and 
taking my pen to write what, as I conceive it, Ador 
the Strong One will say to Zerah the Bright One, I 
rise more easily by this gradation of effort to the poet's 
more sublime conception, and am at the same time 
made more deeply conscious than I could otherwise be 
of her transcendent reach and power of imagina- 
tion, and of the beauty and strength of her poetic 
expression. 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

AN INGOT OF LOVE 

On this smooth agate table are a hundred chilled 
steel balls. How can we make them into one? Put 
a cast-iron band around them? But that does not 
make them one. I know of no way of doing it except 
to melt them. Then they run together of themselves. 

Proud, unsubdued hearts stand stififly and stoutly 
apart. How bring them into loving communion? 
Hoop them together by some ecclesiastical or symbolic 
band ? They may be no nearer together than before.* 
But let them all be melted in sweet contrition at the 
feet of the crucified Jesus and they flow instantly to- 
gether into one blessed ingot of love. 

FANCY FOR FACT 

Bishop A. once told Bishop B. in my presence that 
while he was kneeling at the shrine in the Church of 
the Nativity in Bethlehem, he had a strong feeling of 
assurance that he was praying at the very place where 
Jesus was born. 

" Oh no," exclaimed Bishop B., '' your deep de- 
votional feeling made a fact for you where no such 
fact existed; as Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem, assures 
me that the most careful investigation has failed utterly 
to identify the so-called ' sacred places.' " 

Even strong and cultured minds, we see, may be 
objectively misled by their subjective moods to believe 

* Indeed, through pride of denomination or creed, they may be 
farther apart than ever. 

lO 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

most confidently that certain things exist that do not 
exist. 

So of our disHkes, protests and resentments against 
sHghts, neglects or wrongs of which we are convinced 
that we have been the objects. Be it, that there is 
some ground for our resentful emotions. Dwelt upon 
and brooded over, they are sure to intensify themselves 
into gross and self-harming exaggerations. 

SAFETY IN TRUTH-TELLING 

We are safe in our talk only as we say the thing that 
is in our thought. He who prevaricates touches the 
spring of a hidden trap whose pitiless jaws fly up in 
the least expected moment and seize and hold fast 
their despised and helpless victim. He, on the con- 
trary, whose " yea is yea and his nay, nay," goes forth 
with open brow and unfearing heart, needing no 
hiding-place. The universe is his home, and in any 
part of it he is safe. 

THE IMPRACTICABLES 

It was the custom, so we read, of the most observing, 
most seriously-contemplative and wisest Teacher the 
world has ever seen, to make a study of children at 
their plays, especially where they liked best to play, in 
the market-places. One day as He was passing along 
He noticed that although the children were there as 
usual, they were not playing as usual. He watched 
them to see why. He soon saw why. He saw that 

II 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

while some of the children appeared to be honest and 
good-natured and wanting the play to go on, the others, 
for some reason or other, seemed to be out of sorts; 
captious, cross and self-willed — ugly, in short. Noth- 
ing suited them. They said they would bolt unless 
they could have things their own way ; and yet, strange 
to say, they could not agree among themselves what 
that way should be. The good-tempered ones tried 
every reasonable way to please them. *' Let us try 
dancing," they said, and instantly they began to blow 
a lively tune on their toy pipes. But dance the others 
would not. " Suppose we play funeral, then," and 
at once they turned themselves into " pretend " mourn- 
ers and began to make believe cry. But the discon- 
tented " fellows " would not join in the lamentation, 
either. And then did the great patriot-moralist and 
teacher see, and plainly told the people what he saw; 
that he saw reflected in the children's games, as in a 
mirror, that whole generation of men; men who by 
their follies and indiscretions had gotten themselves 
and their country into serious trouble, but who then 
found no end of fault with the wiser and better dis- 
posed who were trying to help them out of their 
difficulties, so that all might have again the same 
'* good times " that they used to have. 

How it turned out with the children we are not told. 
Probably the clear-headed and right-tempered ones 
concluded that the best way for them was to go right 
on with the music and dancing, and leave the imprac- 
ticables to go on, if they liked, with the funeral. 

12 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



MAKING THE BEST OF A MISTAKE 

Paul is being taken as a prisoner to Rome at a time 
of the year when navigation of the Mediterranean 
begins to be dangerous. Accordingly, having reached 
the island of Crete in safety, Paul advises the cen- 
turion Julius, in whose charge the prisoners are, to 
wait at '' Fair Havens " for settled weather. His ad- 
vice is not taken. The centurion, trusting to what 
he deems the superior wisdom of the supercargo and 
ship-owner, decides to continue the voyage. He soon 
finds, however, that a minister of the gospel, and a 
prisoner at that, may possibly know something worth 
attending to, even about business. It is not long before 
the ship begins to be knocked about by an insolent 
and loud-mouthed sea that pays no sort of respect to 
the authority of even an imperial captain. Just as the 
apostle had foreseen, that surly giant of the Adriatic, 
Euroclydon, falls soon after into one of his wrathful 
periodic fits, and begins to buffet with merciless fury 
the unwary vessel. 

Here is a good chance for Paul to take his revenge. 
The taunt would have been in order, '' I gave you fair 
warning. You have run into this danger with your 
eyes open, and now you must get out of it the best 
way you can." But Paul is of a diflferent spirit. It 
is but proper self-respect for him to say as he did : 
'' Sirs, you should have hearkened unto me, and not 
have loosed from Crete and to have gained this harm 
and loss." But this is no ugly '' I told you so." Paul 

13 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

does not sulk and throw up the whole business because 
his advice was not taken. He has no small pride that 
must be apologized to before he will offer help. 
Frankly accepting the situation, he applies himself 
manfully to the bettering of it. Instead of weakening 
his already disheartened shipmates by selfish re- 
proaches, he strengthens them with words of cheer. 
He recalls their mistake, not to make capital out of it 
for his own reputation, but that his comrades may the 
more easily rise above the mistake when they see how 
heartily he can himself forgive and how thoroughly 
forget it. '' One glance only at the mistake and the 
harm; now let it go forever, and let us do what we 
can to better the present and brighten the future." 

HOW CATHEDRALS DO NOT GROW, AND 
HOW OAKS AND LILIES DO 

The visitor to Morningside Heights, New York City, 
casts an admiring glance upward to the '' Cathedral of 
St. John the Divine," now rising slowly but surely 
to its magnificent completion. 

But to simple admiration would surely succeed a 
wonder beyond power of expression were the beholder 
as he stands gazing, to see the sublime structure, wall 
and arch and dome and tower, going higher and higher 
all of their own undirected and unaided accord — 
neither architect, superintendent or workman in sight ; 
no scaffolding, and not only no derrick with its long 
sweeping arm stretched out to lift huge blocks and 
beams, but no beams or blocks in sight to lift. 

14 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Yet how, again, must both admiration and wonder 
mount to almost incredulous amazement were the 
already rapt beholder to be assured that all which the 
architect had done was to bury his plans and specifica- 
tions at foundation depth, having first imparted to 
them the power to do as they would like with the 
earthy material around them; to change that formless 
material into bronze, marble, steel or wood; to give 
to each product thus transformed its own fit size and 
shape; to lift each to its own proper place; and, to 
crown all, power to drop from turret-top and pinnacle 
fully formed and safely folded plans and specifications 
for other like and alike self-erecting cathedrals. 

In such case, supposing it to exist, will not this won- 
dering beholder feel himself constrained to pause 
awhile and very thoughtfully to " consider " this build- 
ing — '' how it grows ! " 

INANIMATION 

The violet is an original composition. Yet, in a 
sense, it is all borrowed — part soil, part sunlight, part 
water, part air. It could not be the beautiful thing it 
is were it not a great and persistent borrower. But 
neither could it be were it not also a transmuter and 
a composer. Borrowing, transmuting and composing 
make it an original product. 

We make another's thought our own — " appro- 
priate " it — only as we weave it into the texture of 
our own minds. Memorizing is not appropriating. 
Memory is the room on the ground floor of the mill 

IS 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

where the raw silk is stored. While the finished fabric 
is borrowed, in a sense, from the cocoon, it is much 
more than that. It is full, in every part, of invisible 
human brain issue; quite as much man as moth. We 
store up knowledge; fill our minds with it. Then we 
weave our own literary fabrics. It is the personal 
weaving that makes them original. 

In mind and body alike assimilation precedes com- 
position. A hand is composed, but after its own 
peculiar fashion. It grows, and is an original product. 
No lover offers the chemist's carbon, oxygen and 
nitrogen to his lady-love ; he presents to her the rose. 
We go to market for provisions; but when we meet 
our friends we do not exchange lamb chops and 
potatoes; we shake hands. 

Writers, whether of essays, sermons, lectures or 
poems, go first to the world's literary markets. They 
must go. " Give thyself to reading " was an inspired 
Apostle's charge to a young preacher. But when 
Timothy comes to preach, does he preach from a book? 
What is read, rather, must be made one's own by in- 
animation, just as its food the body makes its own by 
incorporation. Another's thought must be not simply 
down-written; it must be in-written as well. Then it 
may be written up and written out. Assimilation, noth- 
ing short of that, is honest appropriation. 

WHAT COMES FROM LOOKING 

" Come, look through this telescope," cries the 
astronomer to the hurrying passers-by. " Only look, 

i6 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

and you will see such glories of the sky as will give 
you nobler thoughts than you have ever dreamed of 
before." So do all those find it who heed the call, and 
look. And the longer they look, the more ennobled in 
thought and aspiration do they become. 

In like manner are all those who halt their eager 
chase after mere worldly good, and who '' with open 
face behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, 
changed into the same image from- glory to glory, 
even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 

INSTANTANEOUS VERIFICATION 

Were any man to have a doubt as to the professedly 
correct scientific principles of the telephone, we would 
not call him skeptical merely, but uncandid and per- 
verse, were he to refuse to speak through the instru- 
ment, or if he did speak, were he to refuse to hold 
to his ear the disk which returns the answer. For 
him who tries it, on the other hand, the fact of inter- 
communication is instantly verified. 

The peace which follows faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, the full felicity of loving God, and the reality 
of communion with Him by prayer, are susceptible 
of like instantaneous verification. Any man, earnest 
to '' seek," has but to try it and he will know. 

PRAYING OVERDONE 

The suppliant retires from the audience-chamber of 
the King as soon as the King has granted his request. 

17 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

He leaves the King's palace and goes out upon the 
King's highway to find and to rejoice in the accom- 
plishment of his desire. 

The leper came begging that he might be cleansed ; 
the centurion that his servant might be healed. No 
sooner had Jesus granted the cleansing and the cure 
than He said to each, '' Go thy way." To the sinning 
woman's tears of penitence came the gracious answer, 
^' Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." 

Shall the healed paralytic still hug his bed; the 
fever-stricken his couch after the fever has left him; 
Lazarus his grave-clothes, when once the life-restoring 
" Come forth " has been spoken ; the sinner his guilt, 
when Jesus has declared, " I forgive " ? Shall the child 
of Grod ever lie in perpetual bondage through fear of 
death now that Jesus has promised, '' He that believeth 
on me shall never die " ? 

Has the church prayed long and earnestly that all 
nations, races and religions may be opened to the 
preaching of the Gospel? For answer comes re-com- 
manded the ascension charge, '' Go thy way. Fill to 
overflowing your mission treasuries. Seek out, en- 
courage, train and send forth your choicest young men 
and young women to the world's end. To the world's 
end the world is open." 

It is time to stop praying and begin acting and re- 
joicing when our prayer has been answered. Pro- 
longed and agonizing supplications are then but the 
fruit of a halting, unready faith. 



i8 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

OUT OF PLACE RESOLUTIONS 

A father bids his boy go at once on a certain errand. 
Is it in place for the boy to say, '' Yes, father, I am 
resolved to go and do that errand for you " ? He is 
not to resolve to go ; he is to go. In such a case, re- 
solving to obey is not to obey ; it is to put oii obeying. 

That old stanza, once everywhere sung in New Eng- 
land revivals : 

" Come, humble sinner, in whose breast, 
A thousand thoughts revolve. 
Come with your guilt and fear opprcst, 
And make this last resolve," 

is, therefore, wholly mistaken advice. Such a resolu- 
tion is like a carriage-wheel lifted from the ground. 
" Revolve " never so swiftly, it makes not a particle of 
progress. Lower the indecisive axle till the tire touch 
the ground; now the wheel does more than revolve; 
it goes forward — a type of resolution coincident with 
action. 

THE TRUE CONFESSIONAL 

It would not have done at all for the prodigal to 
have gone to the house of some old neighbor and have 
there told the tale of his wickedness. It was against 
his father he had sinned, and to that father he must 
acknowledge his transgression. 

There is no one but God to whom we can make un- 
reserved confession. Should we undertake to confess 
to men, it would be but a half confession. We would 

19 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

confess a few amiable weaknesses about which we 
would seem to be greatly exercised, whereas what 
really troubled us would be things a thousand times 
worse, which we would not confess at all. It is not the 
lava streaming down its sides that shakes Vesuvius, 
but the pent-up fires within. 

THE RING AND THE FEAST 

Had the prodigal of the parable yielded to that 
unworthy distrust and fear which too often beset too 
many of us, he would not, directly on his return, have 
gone to meet his father. He would, instead, have gotten 
over the wall of some field down the road and at an 
out-of-sight distance from the house, and would have 
gone to work there with his elder brother, saying to 
himself : '' When father comes out and sees how much 
good work I have done, it may be that he will let 
me come home and give me a place again at the family 
table." 

Ordinarily, when a man wants anything for himself 
— a coat or a pair of shoes — ^he buys and pays for them. 
A gold ring may be bought for the buyer's own use. 
But there are rings, we know, which are gifts and 
pledges of love. So the father gave the shoes, the 
robe, the ring and the feast, not because the prodigal 
had worked for and earned them, but because he was 
his boy, and because he had come home. 

UNFAILING AND UNDISCOURAGED 

Rising slowly in its might, a huge wave rolls in from 

20 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

the ocean and dashes itself with a great roar on the 
beach. An inexperienced observer might well conclude 
that such a standard of energy as that could not long 
be maintained. The sea must sooner or later exhaust 
itself by such vast forth-putting of its power. So, for 
a brief interval, it would seem; the next few waves 
being so small and feeble. But presently in comes 
another long roll just as grand, just as irresistible as 
the first. Watch long as we will, we discover no 
abatement in the sea's strength. Our confidence in 
the constancy of the vast power at work is increased 
rather the longer we look. 

He shows himself to be but a like impatient and 
superficial observer of events who, from the occasional 
lessened activity of the church of Christ, argues the 
gradual exhaustion of either God's purpose or power 
to regenerate the world. Back of the truce with evil 
which He may seem at any time to have called, His 
unchanging love is preparing for new onsets and vic- 
tories unmatched by any that have gone before. *^ The 
Mighty God," He is also the '' Everlasting Father " ; 
as unwearying in His purpose as He is unwasting in 
His power. 

WHIRLED 

What if we do have electricity and steam to whirl 
us from any given meridian round the gfobe in, as it 
were, the twinkling of an eye? Can sin and sorrow 
be whirled out of our consciences and hearts as honey 
is whirled out of the cells of the honeycomb ? Can we 

21 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

never be easy in mind unless our bodies are forever on 
the go ? 

Better, if one must choose, a thousand times better, 
to sit still while God, in answer to our quiet and loving 
trust, unbinds the burdens of our guilt and grief, and, 
by an instantaneous and returnless transit, removes 
them from us as far as the east is from the remotest 
west — ^than travel, no matter how fast or how far, 
provided we must take along and bring back with us 
the same uneasy consciences and the same unsatisfied 
hearts. 

Good and important as rapid transit is in itself, the 
real, abiding happiness of the world is to be increased, 
not by swifter trains, automobiles, telegrams or ships, 
but by a quieter and more heart-staying trust in God 
and by a more outgoing and outgiving love to our 
fellow-men. 

THE TROUBLEMAN 

In any city, or town's lighting-system something is 
always getting out of order, in either the street or 
house-lights. In the company's office is always on 
duty a man whose business it is to correct any trouble 
of the sort as soon as it is reported to him. This ex- 
plains what I once saw hanging on the wall of an elec- 
tric company's office. Next to the " dynamo-tender's 
report " hung the " troubleman's report." 

Jesus Christ offers Himself to us as " Troubleman " 
for all kinds of soul distemper or disorder — no sorrow 

22 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

He will not relieve, no fever of passion He will not sub- 
due, no sin He will not forgive, no bad disposition He 
will not correct, no bondage of fear He will not break, 
no death shadow He will not illumine. The one con- 
dition of cure and comfort is that we do not bear our 
trouble, letting it go unreported; or, when reported, 
reporting it to our, perhaps, equally suffering, equally 
helpless fellow-mortals, instead of reporting it directly 
to Him. 

THE TRUE MASTER 

Deeper far than the incentive, " Be true to yourself," 
penitent trust in Christ's supplies a wholly new and 
sure ground of motive and effort. It is no longer the 
old, endless and despairing struggle against this and 
that particular sin; more effective by far than the 
effort of pride to become humble, of parsimony to 
become liberal, of rebelliousness to become submissive, 
of revengefulness to become forgiving, of vileness to 
become pure. What is now required of me for my 
salvation is not that by force of my own unaided will 
I henceforth love God supremely and my neighbor as 
myself, but that I seek and accept forgiveness for my 
self-confessed violations of those just requirements; 
not that by resolute exertion to break the chain of my 
depravity, I seek to become my own master and then 
be " true '' to my still unholy " self," but that in self- 
distrust and self-renunciation I make Christ my Master 
and then be true to Christ. 

23 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

AN UNSUSPECTED NAME 

I say to an acquaintance : ** I saw you in such a place, 
at such a time, doing so and so. I suppose it was all 
right, seeing it was you; but had it been some other 
man, I should have said at once that there was some- 
thing wrong about it." 

If he reply, '' My long-standing good reputation will 
shield me from public insinuation ; others not so for- 
tified might not be able to stand the strain but I can," 
then is he already on the verge of making an utter 
shipwreck of character. No honest man asks ex- 
emption from merited reproach on the ground of a 
hitherto good name; on account, either, of any ad- 
vantages he may enjoy of wealth, culture or social 
position. The same searching wind of deserved cen- 
sure that blows chill and keen through the cracks of 
the poor man's hovel, finds its sure way through the 
rose-wood shutters of the rich man's palace. No baser 
prostitution of talent, intelligence or wealth than put- 
ting themi to the unworthy use of making doubtful 
practices seem respectable. Putting one's religious 
profession to such use is basest of all. 

GIVING ENVY THE SLIP 

In the eyes of his fellow-townsmen it was little short 
of a crime that one of their young men, who had been 
known among them as only a humble mechanic, had 
quitted His native town and had achieved success 
abroad as a religious teacher and worker of miracles. 

24 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

On His revisiting His home, it was in their thought, if 
not on their tongues, to challenge the genuineness of 
His fame by saying to Him : " Physician, heal Thyself ; 
whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do here 
also in Thy country/' Because of His declining to 
humor this supercilious and shallow prejudice they 
rise up as one man and thrust Him- out of the town, 
determined to end the upstart preacher's pretensions 
by pitching him over the precipice on which their town 
was built. 

The provocation was great; how did He meet it? 
Did He resent the rudeness, upbraid the ingratitude, 
denounce the injustice? Did He seek to kill the envy 
that sought to kill Him? 

Not only did He not try to kill it ; He did not try to 
disarm it, even. To have attempted either would have 
taken time and thought which could be better spent. 
After all, the attempt if made would have been likely 
to fail. Malice bom of narrow-minded prejudice has 
great pertinacity of life. 

He did better. He resorted to the calm strategy of 
circumvention^. He at once foiled and rebuked the 
senselss opposition by a circumambiency of new and 
more widely useful endeavor : " He went round about 
the villages, teaching." 

He did not stop to brood over slights, calumnies, re- 
jections and ill appreciation. He let them quietly 
alone. Although feeling them keenly enough at the 
time. He yet managed to forget them by unceasing 
activity in His appointed work. Even for those who 

25 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

had sought to destroy Him, He did what Httle He could 
but, what was vastly more to the purpose. He began 
at once to encircle them with a chain of loving service 
in behalf of others, who both gladly recognized His 
mission and accepted gratefully His proffered help. 

BIBLE PERSPECTIVE 

The traditional space put in the binding of our 
Bibles between the Old and New Testaments is mis- 
leading as to the oneness of the whole Book. Matthew 
is as truly a continuation of Malachi as Malachi is of 
the foregoing prophets, from a number of whom he 
is separated by about the same interval of time that 
he is from Matthew. So, too, " the Old and the New 
Testament Dispensations '' is a misleading phrase, if 
taken to mean that blessings of an entirely different 
sort were dispensed under the " New " from those 
which were distributed under the '' Old." The phrase 
respects not the matter of the dispensations, but the 
manner only; just as the same moisture of the air is 
" dispensed " in different forms and degrees, as either 
dew, rain, sleet, snow, or hail; just as the same gold 
of the king's exchequer might be dealt out as either 
bullion, unrecognized save by a few as part of the 
royal treasure, or as coin of the realm, bearing clearly 
on its face the king's image and superscription, and 
offered freely to all. Christianity is but the bullion 
of Judaism coined in the gospel mint, to be scattered 
broadcast over the earth, and made the universal cur- 
rency of the world. 

26 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Will some one of the knowing ones, who are fond 
of asserting that the Christian's God is a mild evolu- 
tion of some sterner god of the Jews, be kind enough 
to tell us of the time when God was ever one whit 
less loving, merciful, or gracious than He is to-day? 
Let him tell us, if he can, who but the God of the 
Hebrew Scriptures it was that " passed by iniquity, 
transgression, and sin," that was " slow to anger and 
of great mercy," that was " good to all, and His tender 
mercies over all His works." But no. Precisely the 
same grace, mercy, and love were dispensed then as 
now, only that now they are given with greater clear- 
ness and fulness, and with wider range of distribution. 

No man, whatever his genius for discrimination, 
can rightly comprehend the map even of his own coun- 
try so long as, microscope in hand, he persists in 
flattening his nose against the surface, content with 
his ability to detect minute errors in the spelling or 
location of small and unimportant places. It is only 
the man who stands far enough away from the map 
to» get the true perspective who takes in the grand 
unity of the whole, or can read in the great letters 
stretching across the entire canvas, from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, " The United States of America." 

Precisely so, no near-sighted, short-range, micro- 
scopic criticism of doubtful and insignificant details 
can possibly gain or give any broad-minded, compre- 
hensive view of the Bible as one Book, by one Author, 
with one aim; 



^ 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

HIDDEN LINKS 

With his deep-sea fingers the geologist traces the 
mountain ridges which far below cleat together 
parted and jealous continents. So, beneath all the 
surface barriers of race, color, caste and sex ; of rude- 
ness or refinement ; of occupation or position, the Bible 
makes all men to be of one family for whose salvation 
the one Father has made equal and full provision 
in the Gospel of His Son. 

EYES THAT SEE 

The stock-broker, produce-dealer, banker, merchant, 
pleasure-seeker, fashion-worshipper; each sees in the 
daily prints or hears at the exchanges precisely that 
for which he has an eye or an ear — things which 
others having just as good eyes and ears do not see 
or hear. Not the shortest " Work Wanted " in the 
smallest type, that upon it some eye is not riveted. 
What an unseeing or unhearing person needs is not 
better lenses or drums, but that quick attention which 
real interest secures. 

Jonathan Edwards scanned the secular journals of 
his day (there were no others) for such bits of in- 
formation as he could glean from them of the con- 
dition and prospects of Christ's Kingdom in any part 
of the world. What he had an eye for, he saw. 

The " Jerusalem Hebrew Gazette '' (had there been 
one) would have printed in small pica the rumor that 
certain Gentile outcasts had embraced Christianity. 

28 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Yet that small piece of news the " apostles and the 
brethren in Judea " (Acts io:i-i8) would have picked 
out from the long string of paragraphs as the gem 
of the collection. 

LIFE, LORD OVER DEATH. 

Life is more than life. It not only lives ; it quickens 
death. 

A clod of dead earth lies buried here. Left to itself, 
it stays dead forever. But down there in the darkness 
a living tendril of a living root of a living 
plant is feeling after this dead clod, finds and 
touches it, and, by touching, imparts to it of its own 
life; then gives to it honored fellowship with itself 
in all the beauty of the rose or grandeur of the oak. 
A life-touch and from lifeless lumps a nodding violet, 
a perfumed lily, a towering palm. 



29 



II 



A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL 

When the Arctic explorer, Nansen, announced to 
the crew of the Fram his determination to quit the 
ship for good and all and push his way northward 
alone over the ice-fields, Petersen begged that he 
might accompany his captain on the journey. 

" It will be no child's play," said Nansen. " The 
journey will be one not only of severe hardship, but 
of great danger." 

" I would not think," replied Petersen, *' of taking 
it alone, but with you along, I know it will be all 
right." 

The world's best framed code of morals leaves us 
stranded on the way to our strenuously sought goal 
of a perfect life as discouragingly as the Fram halted 
Nansen on his way to the Pole. In this crisis of our 
need, Jesus appears and encourages our quest with 
the assurance that, if we but follow in His steps. He 
will make our seeking a success. 

But first He would have us consider well what 
following in His steps means — the living by us of the 
same self-denying, cross-bearing life that He Him- 
self lived here on the earth — a life of equal love to 
our neighbor and of supreme love to God; the doing 
to others, in all our social and business relations, as 

30 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

we would have them do to us; the refusing to put 
fame, power, wealth or selfish ease or advantage 
before love; the suffering of loss, if need be, in the 
maintaining of this high standard; meekness under 
wrongs done to us; forgiveness for the wrong done, 
and for the evil a return only of good; obedience to 
whatever it be God's will that we should either do 
or suffer. 

To live such a life as this in such a world as this 
Jesus would at the outset have us understand is no 
'' child's play." On the contrary, that it means hard- 
ness to be endured, dangerously misleading by-paths 
to be shunned, rising inclinations to turn aside or 
turn back to be steadfastly resisted; a fight against 
disloyal doubt to be fought in right soldierly fashion, 
and fought to a triumphant finish. 

What the hardships and perils of that Arctic ex- 
pedition from the Fram would prove to be, Nansen 
himself could no more tell than could his would-be 
follower. It would be an equal risk for them both. 

In Jesus we have an experienced as well as a faith- 
ful guide. He knows the way; is Himself the way. 
He knows our need; just what strength for whatever 
weakness, what support under whatever burden of care, 
what succor for whatever kind of temptation, what 
comfort for whatever sorrow, what courage for what- 
ever disheartening fear. More than guide. He is also 
a companion; eating with us the bread of whatever 
trial, tasting with us the cup of whatever affliction. 
He not only feels for us; He feels with us. Hence 

31 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

the calm and fearless trust with which we go on to 
meet whatever the future may have in store for us, 
in assured confidence that we shall be welcomed, at 
last, to the joy, in heaven, of our faithfully followed 
Leader and Guide. 

SIGHT-WORSHIP 

In a crowd the little child holds tight to its father's 
hand. In the heart of a forest the traveller fears losing 
sight of his guide. Like the child and the traveller 
we are all beset by dangers, to defend us from which 
we need a higher wisdom than our own. For those 
who believe in either one Supreme Being or many 
superior beings, it is the greatest of comforts to know 
that He or they are both ever near them and ever able 
and willing to defend them from all that is evil and 
bring them to all that is. good. 

It is in this natural and universal feeling that idol- 
atry, or sight-worship, has its root and, to a certain 
extent, its justification. If I can see the God I wor- 
ship, then I know that He sees me; that He takes 
note of my homage, beholds my offerings and hears 
my prayers. Better, a thousand times better, the 
devout idolater than the no-God atheist or the know- 
nothing-of-God agnostic. For idol-worship is still 
worship; a humble acknowledgment of dependence 
on divine wisdom and strength. As much better than 
atheism or agnosticism as a living tree, however dis- 
figured by unsightly excrescences, is better than a dead 
tree, however tall and shapely; better as crudest 

32 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

petroleum, which may yet be refined to brilliancy, is 
better than deadly gas, however scientifically prepared, 
which extinguishes any light over which it is poured. 
Be it that idol- worship is but a pitiful mockery of the 
soul's deepest need, it is still a constant reminder of 
that unsatisfied need. Such a point of union is thus 
established between polytheism and Christianity as 
easily accounts for the welcome which the honestly 
inquiring idol-worshipper has gladly given to those 
new and trustworthy answers of Revelation which give 
true scope and direction to the hitherto blind impulses 
and aspirations of his religious nature. 

BIBLE KAKOGRAPHY 

Like those other " poor " of whom Jesus tells us, 
we have poor Bible-spellers with us always. I myself 
know one of them at least whom it took years to spell 
rightly the little Bible word " all." 

It was always written plainly enough, for example, 
that '' The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all 
sin," that " All manner of sin shall be forgiven," and 
that '' All things work together for good to them that 
love God." Yet, strange to say, a morbid and purblind 
conscience, although seeking the very rest which such 
assurances were intended to give, would insist on 
spelling the " all," s-o-m-e. 

May it not be that this misography of a weak faith 
is even now making many a Bible reader, instead of 
walking in the clear sunlight of hope, grope and 
stumble in the gloomy labyrinth of fear? 

33 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

THE RIGHT OF WAY 

Wind shows its power disastrously only when it 
meets with opposition ; only when it finds something in 
its path that would stop its progress. The force of 
water running freely is hidden; as is also that of 
electricity along a free wire. Digestion causes un- 
easiness only when the digestive energy is in some 
way obstructed. So, although the Gospel is a mighty 
power, it makes commotion only in hearts opposed 
to its progress. In hearts or homes where it has '' free 
course," it is " glorified," even in its greatest energy, 
as a Gospel of perfect peace. 

EASILY STOPPED 

In less than a minute with one blade of your pocket- 
knife you may kill a mountain cedar while it is yet 
sleeping in its little, wind-swayed, cone-hammock; 
albeit, once grown, it holds fast its place for centuries 
on the slopes of Lebanon, grasping great boulders with 
its roots, while with its trunk and top it stands co- 
wrestler with the whirlwind. 

A baby's foot may crush the tgg of an eagle or of 
an anaconda; although, let it be for a little, the one 
will carry off a child in his strong talons and the other 
will strangle horse and rider in his dreadful folds. 

With something of the same ease may good and 
evil be destroyed in their beginnings; whether a new 
habit, a new home, a new child, a new community, 
or a new nation. 

34 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

A parable of Nature on the " divinely-announced 
importance of cradles." 

A COUNTERFEIT OF LIFE 

As there is an erudition which is but a mass of un- 
digested knowledge kept idly on deposit in the cold 
storage of the memory, so there is a kind of monog- 
enous morality, born of worldly prudence as its sole 
parent, which is but ethical behavior resolved into rule. 
What the tow, wire and glass eyes are to the eagle 
in the taxidermist's shop-window, such is a religious 
creed which serves no higher purpose than to keep 
the outward life in becoming shape ; whereas the same 
spiritual truth digested and assimilated is what its 
food is to the living eagle and which makes of him 
a soaring aspirant of the air, the mountain and the sky. 

GAIN IN BEAUTY; LOSS IN POWER 

A rose may so increase the number and showiness 
of its petals as to lose all power of self -propagation. 
The sermon may be so highly adorned with the graces 
of style as to yield no fruit in the consciences and 
lives of its hearers. The liturgy may be so aesthetically 
elaborated as to exalt art above devotion, and so 
change the call from, '' Worship the Lord in the 
beauty of holiness," to, " Worship Beauty in the holi- 
ness of the Lord." 

So that, whether it be rose, rhetoric, or ritual, undue 
ornamentation tends alike to impotency. 

35 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

HEAPING AND GROWING 

Heaping is enlarging of bulk by mechanical super- 
position. Growing is swelling out from an organizing 
and unifying life-centre. We are not heaped up ; we 
grow. Bodies, minds and hearts are for a far nobler 
end than to serve as so many marvellously constructed 
warehouses of bodies stuffed with victuals ; of minds, 
with facts; of hearts, with creeds. The dwarf eats 
enough to make an athlete, the bookworm reads 
enough to make a scholar, the formalist believes 
enough to make a saint. The larder, library or litany 
may be mine, but what of me? 

TAKING IN AND GIVING OUT 

If I may be allowed the '' free coinage " of a con- 
venient word, I would say that donobility, or the 
ability to give, is always conditioned upon suscepti- 
bility, which, looking at its root-meaning, we see to be 
simply the ability to take. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said to a friend: 
" Come with me out to my farm, and I will show you 
what a tree can do when you give it a chance ! ^' And 
what was the secret of that grand old evergreen's 
magnificent success but that it had kept on steadily 
enlarging year by year its susceptibility, or taking 
power, until at length there was as much of the tree 
below ground as there was above, and until the 
aggregate of its leaf-surface is reckoned no longer by 
square yards, but by square roods ? 

3^ 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Our orchards, vineyards and grain-fields — why do 
they find themselves in the condition they are to make 
their yearly contributions to the world's need but that 
they have been as quick to seek and as free to take 
as they are now ready and generous to give? What 
have their restless rootlets been but so many busy 
fingers spread out in all directions to feel after and 
find whatever the friendly soil has been free to fur- 
nish? And what have the leaves been but so many 
beseeching and eager palms extended to welcome the 
help which has been offered them in the air and in 
the summer's sunshine and showers? Vines and trees 
are generous givers only because, first, they have faith- 
fully kept themselves in constant touch with their 
own proper sources of supply; because, second, they 
have been diligent to improve this opportunity of con- 
tact by receiving and appropriating the provision 
offered, and because, third, they have been careful to 
enlarge their power of appropriation to meet their 
continually growing needs. 

Why is it that some Christians we see are branches 
clustered always with spiritual fruit, ready always with 
their cheerful gifts of time, thought, prayer, sympathy, 
money, as opportunities arise or fit occasions are pre- 
sented ? For the like three reasons, and for these only 
— ^because they keep themselves by an unwavering 
trust in closest union with Christ, the true Vine; be- 
cause mind and heart are thus kept uninterruptedly 
open to receive the life He is ever waiting to impart, 
and because along with these is a constantly growing 

^7 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

susceptibility welcoming the larger and yet larger 
gifts of his inflowing love. 

THE PTERIGIUM OF PREJUDICE 

Once, to a man I knew, the street lights, the rail-car 
lights, the star-lights, and even his own home-lights, 
began to grow grotesquely out of shape. They all 
seemed like comets with long, fan-like tails. What 
was the trouble? Either something was wrong with 
one or both of the man's eyes, or else the light-dis- 
pensers of earth and sky were conspiring to vex him- 
with unreal and distorted vision. An oculist who was 
consulted said that the distortion was due to a pte- 
rigium; a thin, translucent membrane which, creeping 
slowly over the ball of the right eye, had at length 
reached the pupil, where, by its obtruding edges, it 
was. obscuring and diffracting the light. Having, al- 
though only after long delay, submitted to an opera- 
tion for its removal, all objects then appeared to him 
in their true shape, size and proportion — no more 
strangeness, fault-finding or vexation. 

Prejudice is a pterigium of the mind. He whose 
mental vision is clouded by it misconceives the motives 
and methods of his associates in either business, politics 
or religion; misinterprets the opinions of others in 
art, science and letters, and fails to enjoy the clear, 
unrefracted light of even his own home. • Saddest 
of all, some there are whose twisting prepossessions 
veil from their sight even the beauty and glory of 
Him who alone is the world's true Light. 

38 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

A man who had long suffered from a singularly 
perverted vision of this sort had the good sense to 
yield to an operation of divine surgery. " And imme- 
diately," so the account goes, the pterigium, in the 
form of " scales," fell from his eyes, and at once, and 
ever thereafter, he saw in their true light both things 
and persons which before had been hated, because 
they had been so grossly misconceived. 

SIFTED 

There is more in the gift of a friend than the gift. 
There was more in the beautiful seal sent to Goethe 
a few months before his death, the idea of which was 
conceived by the then young Carlyle and the design 
of which (the serpent of eternity encircling a star 
with the legend " Unhasting, Unresting") was 
sketched by Mrs. Carlyle and sent by " Fifteen Eng- 
lishmen " — there was more in the seal than in the seal 
itself — " a memorial," as the givers wrote, " of the 
gratitude we owe you and which we think the whole 
world owes you." 

There is more in the thanks for such a gift than 
the thanks. The thanks are a return of the proffered 
love. 

Gifts, however beautiful or costly, are but shadows 
and like shadows they pass away. Is the gift a gem? 
It may be crushed or lost. Is it a more brilliant gem 
of speech ? Crystallized in words of whatever tongue, 
yet all tongues shall cease. Is knowledge the gem? 
It shall vanish away. The love, of which the gift is 

39 



THROUGH THE SIEVE' 

but the expression, abides. Sift all the domestic, social, 
commercial, political, educational, religious activities 
which make up the varied life of this our busy world ; 
only so much of love to God and man as comes out 
of it all, endures. The remainder is but chaff, ere 
long to be blown away and to disappear. 

PRYING UNDER 

Confidingness of the open heart is what one must 
have who would receive help from either man or God. 
That sort of prying underneath which we rightly call 
" suspicion '^ makes it next to impossible for the 
would-be giver of either counsel or comfort to carry 
into effect the purpose of his good-will. Little can 
be done either with or for one, the door of whose 
heart is rendered wellnigh inaccessible by a Cerberus 
brood of frowning suspicions and growling doubts. 

" AHA '' 

That simple-hearted Christian has much to learn 
who does not yet know with what " jealous leer 
malign " the devil and the children of the devil eye 
him askance as, all unconscious of harm, he walks in 
the pleasant garden of the Lord; the eagerness with 
which they watch for his halting, the secret gladness 
with which they catch at the slightest dereliction ; and 
how, upon observing it, they wag their heads and say, 
" Aha, aha," and at the same time more fondly than 
ever caress their own impiety, lust or greed. 

40 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

CONSISTENCY IN WRONG 

No greater mistake can be made or conceived in 
the ethical sphere than that of fancying that by some 
contradictory process of moral, or rather of immoral 
alchemy, evil resolutely persisted in becomes good ; in- 
justice, justice; discourtesy, courtesy; wrong, right; 
falsehood, truth. 

Even so great and so good a man as David seems 
once to have gotten it into his head that '' a lie well 
stuck to is as good as truth," and that a wrong well 
followed up ceases after awhile to be a wrong, and 
is as good as the right. 

David had deeply injured Uriah by the wrong he 
had done to Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. When David 
came to reflect upon it, two courses were open to 
him. One was frankly to acknowledge to Uriah the 
wrong he had done and ask his forgiveness. Being a 
king did not excuse or exempt David from doing that 
duty. Rather, his higher position made the duty more 
imperative. 

The other course was to cover up his crime, if he 
could, by neutralizing the evidence of its existence. 
Had David succeeded in that he would very likely 
have carried his injurious treatment of Uriah no fur- 
ther. Only the self-denying loyalty of his faithful 
subject foiled the king's deceptive purpose. Under 
other circumstances this manly devotion of Uriah 
would have touched David's heart. But failing to 
make an instant retreat from that false path he had 

41 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

begun to tread, he is pushed on by a fatal consistency 
in wrong to rush still further in that downward path. 
So to adultery and false pretence of regard for Uriah's 
welfare David now adds the crime of murder. He 
sends a secret order to Joab to set Uriah in the fore- 
front of the hottest battle, to make it as certain as he 
can that Uriah will be slain. 

David, no doubt, felt a measure of relief when the 
tidings was brought to him. of the unsuccessful battle 
and of Uriah's death. The last obstacle was now taken 
away to the full accomplishment of his first guilty 
purpose, and he crowns the enormity by taking Bath- 
sheba to be his wife. 

To appearance David has scored a great success in 
his selfish, ungrateful crime. But has he? The nar- 
rative closes with these few but fearfully significant 
words : '' But the thing that David had done dis- 
pleased the Lord." 

One natural law, at least, does not hold good in the 
spiritual world. It is only down to a certain point that 
water grows more dense and heavy by increase of 
cold. After that degree of temperature has been 
passed and until freezing begins additions of cold 
cause the water both to expand and to become lighter. 

But never comes there the time when added wrong 
does not lend added weight to crime and guilt. 

REMEMBERED AND FORGOTTEN 

Jesus remembers what we forget, and forgets what 
we remember. He forgets our sins, but remembers 

42 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

whatever kindness we may have done to even the least 
of His brethren, and will remind us of it when He 
shall come and sit in judgment upon the throne of 
His glory. 

AN UNSAFE VENTURE 

Full trust in God's leadership once enabled a com- 
pany of escaping fugitives to pass safely through the 
wainscoted walls of a dangerous sea. 

When their pursuers saw how securely they went 
on, the pursuers " assayed " to do the same. " Where 
these go, we can go," they said ; '' more surely and 
safely even, seeing we are so much better equipped. 
We have horses, chariots and arms, while they are 
unarmed and on foot." 

The pursued, however, had one more than counter- 
vailing advantage. The pillar of cloud separating 
the hosts was bright only to the first. It was not a 
revolving light, shining equally on each in turn. It 
was continual " cloud and darkness to those, but it 
gave light by night to these." 

For the pursuers, therefore, it was a rash and, as it 
proved, a fatal experiment. The waters closed in upon 
them in the darkness and they perished. 

Through the valley of the shadow of death moves 
the guiding pillar of God. It is not a revolving pillar. 
Only the front, the heavenward side, shines. Would 
we share its brightness and its safety, we must leave 
the back, dark side of the pillar, go forward and take 

43 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

our places among the trusting, pilgrim-followers of 
God. 

A DISHONOR TO GOD'S LOVE 

Penance is a false and blind substitute for re- 
pentance. It is misleading and mischievously opposed 
to the idea and fact of that free, full, immediate and 
unrevocable forgiveness by which true repentance is 
invariably followed. This, whether the penance take 
the form of wearing coarse clothes, ascetic abstinence 
from personal adornment, going barefoot, fasting, 
flagellation, or singularity of speech, dress or man- 
ners. 

When the self-exiled, home-deserting son came to 
consider the great wrong he had been doing and had 
at last determined to do the best he could to make 
it right with his father, and when he went back and 
said frankly, " Father, I know that I have been doing 
wrong since I left you," what did the father say ? Did 
he say, " My boy, you had good clothes on when you 
left home; here you are back in tatters. Wear your 
rags awhile longer that all may see what prodigality 
brings a young man to in the long run. Where is the 
ring I made you a present of at your last birthday? 
I buy no more jewelry for the pawn-shop. You went 
away well-shod; you come home barefoot. It will 
be a good reminder to go barefoot awhile longer. 
You always had a bountiful table to sit down at here 
at home. You ran yourself down and out until at 
last you had only husks to eat and only swine for 

44 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

messmates, and nobody to care whether you ever had 
anything better or not. I prescribe for a few weeks, 
by way of probation, a diet of bread and water." 

Was that the way the father did? For rags, in- 
stead, it was a robe, and that of the very best. For 
the empty hand that had been throwing husks to the 
swine, a ring. For the bare and bruised feet, shoes. 
For fasting, feasting ; for gloom, gladness ; for misery, 
merriment; for moans, music and dancing. 

God give to these poor, hesitant, doubting, fearful 
hearts of ours to see deeper down than we have ever 
yet seen into the unsearchable depths of the Father's 
ever-welcoming, freely-forgiving, guilt-removing love. 

WELCOME HOME 

What the father would say or do to him in case 
he should return, the now penitent son did not know. 
But that was not for the son to consider. One thing 
he could do, and it was all he could do. He could 
go back to his father's house. One thing he could 
say, and it was all he could say : " Father, I have 
sinned." However it might turn out, he would do 
his part, leaving it to his father to do as he would. 

Feeling as he did, I think that the son would have 
come back, even had he counted on being reproved 
and perhaps repulsed by his injured father. Certainly 
he was not prepared for the welcome that followed 
— the kiss, the ring, the best robe, the feast — all to 
express the father's gladness for his boy's return. 

I think our Lord has given us these words so that 

45 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

beyond the possibility of mistake we may know how 
true and strong and tender our Father's love is for 
us, and with what perfect confidence we may at all 
times come to him and especially in times of our 
greatest weakness and deepest need. 

NO SECOND-BIRTH SUICIDE 

Could we have known beforehand the pains and 
trials, the deceits and sins, the griefs and struggles 
of the world, we might, had the choice been given us 
and the capacity to exercise it, we might have chosen 
not to be born into it. At any rate, we know that 
" Would to God I had never been born," has been 
many a misanthrope's regret and many a suicide's 
despair. 

True, the world into which the second birth intro- 
duces us has its conflicts too, but here the successful 
struggle is to rid ourselves of the sins, dangers and 
sorrows of the state into which we were first bom. 
Who, born from above, has ever said, '* Oh, that I 
had never been born that second time " ? Who has 
ever heard of a second-birth suicide ? 

A HIDDEN DANGER 

Civilization is deceptive. It gives the world a fairer 
outside, but it leaves the core of character untouched. 
Your modern Dives may wear a finer purple than the 
Dives of two thousand years ago. He may sit at a 
more sumptuous table and live in a costlier and more 
elegant mansion, and for all that be as selfishly, as 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

hard-heartedly, indifferent to the distress whose cry 
goes up daily at his gate. Magnificent rotundas, 
adorned with statues and paintings and surmounted 
by sky-piercing domes, are powerless to charm away 
corruption from our halls of legislation. Mercantile 
dishonesty is none the less hateful because enacted 
along burnished counters and under electric lights ; las- 
civiousness, none the less loathsome because bedecked 
with the outside respectabilities of wealth, business 
distinction or public eminence. No veneering and 
no varnish that God does not pierce through to the 
dry rot of pride and unthankfulness beneath. 

INTERCESSION FOR THE ILL-DESERVING 

There was no very urgent reason, as men would 
say, why Abraham should interest himself particularly 
in the fate of Sodom, or even of his nephew who lived 
there. Were not the people of Sodom '' wicked and 
sinners before the Lord exceedingly " ? Was not that 
city a plague-spot on God's fair earth, corrupted and 
corrupting, poisoned and poisoning, and would it not 
be every way better that such a sink of iniquity be 
cleansed by the potent disinfectants of brimstone and 
fire? And as for Lot, did he not, in utter disregard 
of what was due to the age and prior claim of his 
uncle, and taking mean advantage of his uncle's gen- 
erosity, did he not choose the fertile valley of the 
Jordan for his own pasture-grounds and deliberately 
pitch his tent toward Sodom? And did he not, after 
that he had become thoroughly acquainted with the 

47 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

pollutions of the town, did he not take his family 
there and make it his chosen residence? And would 
it not, then, have been a fitting recompense had his 
injured uncle left him to shift for himself as best 
he could in the coming overthrow? 

That would indeed have been the way of the world 
— the spirit which leads the man who has attained 
all of rank, power and wealth which he desires, to 
leave his fellows to struggle alone with their tempta- 
tions, hardships and dangers, and to excuse their own 
neglect by the heartless old plea, '' Am I my brother's 
keeper? Things must take their course. It is no 
more than right that he suffer the consequence of 
his folly." 

Abraham does better. His own affairs are indeed 
satisfactorily adjusted, his own interests are well 
looked after, his own safety is assured, his glory as 
founder of a great nation is fully guaranteed. Still 
he has more to ask. '' He stands yet before the Lord." 
No sooner have the two men turned their faces toward 
the doomed city than he begins that humble, earnest, 
importunate intercession which has ever since been the 
guide and encouragement of God's people in their 
supplications for the worst of sinners. 

SAVED 

Never, since the world began, were there so many 
ways of pleasing, diverting and cultivating men as 
there are now. But, alas, for the hopes of mere human- 
itarians, God does not say, " Look unto me and be 

48 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

ye diverted, pleased and entertained " ; nor yet, '' Look 
unto me and be ye cultured, polished and refined," but, 
" Look unto me and be ye saved." He does not say, 
" You are unfortunate, go to your friends and be 
pitied; you are ill-informed, go to books, lectures and 
teachers and be enlightened; you are tempted, con- 
sider the ruined and be admonished; you are fearful, 
lose yourself in business and forget; you are afflicted, 
consider that it is the common lot of all and be con- 
soled." Above, and deeper than all this, and as the 
root from which all true comfort in affliction must 
come; out of which all spiritual enlightenment, all 
complete victory over temptation, all true, abiding 
peace must arise, " You are lost — look unto Me and 
be saved." 

CREATED TO GOOD WORKS 

By no possible strenuousness of endeavor could 
primeval chaos and night ever have worked themselves 
over and up into such a world as this which we see; 
a world of order, beauty and life. Much less could 
souls, darkened and disordered by sin, by however in- 
tense or prolonged a struggle, develop a spiritual 
cosmos of light and life from themselves. '' Let there 
be light : let there be life," must first be spoken from 
above. 

As our first and natural birth is our first, our nat- 
ural beginning, so is our second, our spiritual birth, 
our first and new spiritual beginning. And just as 
it is not the infant's travail, but the mother's, that 

49 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

brings the infant to its birth, so is it not by their own, 
but by the travail of Christ's " soul " that those are 
born who are born again. 

Whatever " good works " we do, therefore, we do 
because we ourselves are " God's workmanship " ; be- 
cause we are " created " to do them^ — the works *' or- 
dained of God, that we should walk in them." 

Hence, 

" Kindle a flame of sacred love 
In these cold hearts of ours," 

is the true order ; and hence, again, the hopeless mis- 
take of those who say: 

" We, first, will kindle love divine. 
And that, O Lord, shall kindle thine." 

GROWING NOT TO GRACE, BUT IN IT 

" Grace " is free giving. Not only the free for- 
giving of sins, but the free giving of spiritual life. 
And since life precedes and is an essential condition 
of growth, we are not bidden, as though we were 
not living, to grow toward and at length, perhaps, 
TO " grace and the knowledge of Christ " ; but as 
those who have been '' quickened " to this freely given 
spiritual life, to grow there-" IN." 

SOMETHING TO EAT 

A child of twelve years lay dead in her father's 
house. Jesus having come, He " commands that some- 
thing be given her to eat." 

so 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

But when does He command this? Not until that 
other word of command, *' Damsel, I say unto thee, 
Arise," has restored supernaturally to the child's body 
its natural but death-interrupted power of nutrition. 
It were but mockery to offer to the dead anything 
in the way of food, however lovingly or skilfully it 
may have been prepared, no way having yet been de- 
vised or discovered by which the dead may eat their 
way back to life. 

CLIMBING 

Trying to reach heaven by mere stress of moral 
endeavor is very much like a " continuous perform- 
ance " at climbing a rope. The climber is all the time 
either climbing or holding on. No wonder the strong- 
est man should tire of doing that. He must perforce 
stop climbing now and then and rest — a most unsatis- 
factory rest, since it is almost as hard to hold on as it 
is to climb. 

Faith is neither climbing nor holding on. It is not 
even holding on to Christ. It is dropping into Christ's 
arms and letting Christ hold me, I do not forget 
the beautiful picture of the female figure clinging to 
a cross set on a rock in mid-ocean, nor the legend 
accompanying it, '' Teneo et Teneor " (I hold and 
am held). The order, however, is a mistaken one. 
The motto should read, " Teneor et Teneo " (I am 
held and I hold). 



SI 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

THE SPIDER'S FOOT FOR THE SPIDER'S 
WEB 

While its web means swift and safe transit for the 
spider, it bodes only hindrance and peril for the fly. 
The fly does, indeed, seem for a time to be the more 
active of the two, but the activity is of a wholly dif- 
ferent sort. For while the fly struggles, the spider 
glides. 

Stretched between earth and heaven is the wide 
web of our human life; a web intricately woven with 
the interlacing threads of duty and devotion, of trial 
and temptation. In the meshes of this web the clumsy 
foot of self-righteousness becomes discouragingly and 
hopelessly entangled, while for the nimble arachnoid 
foot of faith it serves as a smooth track on which the 
steadfast believer glides safely to heaven. 

THE ONE THING THAT COUNTS 

What is there a thoughtful man would not do, 
so the doing of it would ensure his being dealt with 
by God as one absolutely free from guilt? Will 
praying, fasting, weeping count for this? Then he 
will pray, fast and weep. Will money offerings 
count, whether for the poor or for the support and 
spread of the Gospel? For the furtherance of these 
or kindred objects he will, if need be, " bestow all his 
goods." Will a constant and careful study of the 
Scriptures count ? To that task he will most earnestly 

52 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

address himself; will, if necessary, get the entire Bible 
by heart. Will regular and punctual attendance on 
church services count ; taking the ''Endeavorers' " 
pledge; the doing of Y. M. C A. work; exhorting, 
preaching, offering himself for missionary work at 
home or abroad? Whatever of all this he has reason 
to think would improve his chances of winning pardon 
and eternal life, that he will be forward to do. 

Yet he may do all of this and still fail of eternal 
life. He may do nothing of it and yet be saved. 

On the inside walls of any and every Christian 
church the things named above might, as mottoes, be 
most appropriately inscribed : as, ** Pray without 
ceasing " ; " And thou, when thou fastest " ; " Night 
and day with tears " ; " To communicate forget not " ; 
" Forget not the assembling of yourselves together " ; 
" Do good unto all men ^' ; ** Preach the gospel to 
every creature." 

Were I, however, asked to suggest a motto suitable 
to be inscribed over the entrance-portal of every 
Christian church, it would be this : ''To him that 
worketh not, but believeth on Him who justifieth the 
ungodly, his believing is counted for righteousness." 

College catalogues distinguish carefully between the 
terms of admission and the work to be done by the 
candidate after matriculation. In the divinely author- 
ized and perennial catalogue of the Christian church 
the sole and invariable condition set down for admis- 
sion is this simple trust in Him who was " delivered 
for our offences and raised again for our justification." 

S3 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

NOT "IT," BUT "I" 

Had God undertaken to give to the world a knowl- 
edge of any natural science, He would have given it 
with such clearness and fulness as to make any dif- 
fering or opposing declaration irreverent presumption. 
No twentieth century electrician could make an hon- 
orable reputation for himself by attempting to dis- 
prove or alter any statement which God might have 
chosen, however long ago, to make regarding elec- 
tricity. 

Of ethical principles and practices it did please God 
to give to the world just such a clear, concise and 
complete statement; not on parchment, to decay, but 
on stone, to endure; not tentative, but final, since it 
is significantly said, " And He added no more." The 
age in which Jesus lived, although in other respects 
far more enlightened than was the age of Moses, had 
not, nevertheless, outgrown that two-articled code of 
supreme love to God and equal love to our neighbor. 
Moses was still good enough Sabbath-day reading 
for the synagogues, built more than three thousand 
years after that twofold formula was given; and so 
far as mere ethical instruction is concerned, he is 
good enough either Sabbath-day or week-day read- 
ing for synagogue, church, cathedral, class-room or 
closet to-day. The Two Tables were but the pattern 
of the eternal legislation brought down from heaven 
and showed to Moses in the Mount. A complete 
angelic and archangelic bible, they would serve as a 

S4 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

complete human bible, as well, did men, like angels, 
live fully up to its requirements. Any perfect man's 
bible, if such perfect man there be, is a bible of but 
fifteen verses; epitomized, of but a single verse. 

" If such there be '' ; but what for such of us as 
are not perfect, and have grown weary of trying to 
be so? 

A knowledge of anatomy and hygiene answers very 
well for the man who breaks no bones and is never 
sick. But for the man who is not '' whole," anatomy 
and hygiene are no longer the " way." For them the 
physician is the way. What a sick man needs is not 
a rule, but a person — not the laws of health, how- 
ever perfect, but one who shall come to save him from 
the consequences of having broken them. Hence 
Jesus never said, " It," but always '' I." " I am the 
way." Not, ^^ Go to it"— the law— but "Come, ye 
weary, unto Me." 

THE ONE TEMPTATION 

Christians have, comprehensively, but one tempta- 
tion to resist and overcome. Jesus had but one — the 
temptation to put some other thing or things before 
love. '' See," said Satan, " what a noise you will 
make in the world if by a word you turn these stones 
into bread ; what a greater noise still if you leap from 
this temple-top and are caught in mid-air by rescuing 
angels ; and greatest of all if you become, what I will 
make you, possessor and sole monarch of all the king- 
doms of the world." 

55 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

" No," answers Jesus ; " on no such showily-am- 
bitious errand have I come. Miracles, indeed, I shall 
work; miracles, too, far greater than turning stones 
into bread, or than that of being caught and upborne 
by the hands of descending angels, or even of com- 
manding in a moment of time the submissive homage 
of all the kingdoms of the earth. Hearts of flint I 
will turn into hearts of flesh. Angels will attend Me, 
but it will not be as the imposing retinue of an earthly 
king, but only that they may minister to the weak- 
ness, pain and sorrow incident to the working out of 
my consuming purpose of love in the world's redemp- 
tion. A crown of dominion I shall wear, but of do- 
minion exercised in furtherance of love's most loving 
behests." 

The ambition of the prince of this world is to out- 
hoard, to out-do, and to out-shine; and in order to 
do this, to out-manoeuvre and out-wit; if need be, to 
out-fight and out-kill. The ambition of Jesus, the 
Prince of Peace, is to out-love, to out-give, to out- 
bless, and to out-save. He is the world's Saviour in 
that He stands unwaveringly, unfalteringly and fully 
for this. So far as His professed followers stand 
uncompromisingly for this, are they recognized as 
such by the world. " By this," said the Master, " shall 
all men know." He saves His people from all their 
sins by saving them from this one generic, all-inclu- 
sive sin and mistake of putting this, that or the other 
thing or things before love. No, not business for 
business' sake, or money for money's sake, art for 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

art's sake, learning for learning's sake, or dominion 
for dominion's sake; but business, riches, art, educa- 
tion, power or position; yes, the more of them the 
better, so they are gained, held and used as minister- 
ing hand-maids of grateful, responsive, out-going and 
out-giving love. 

Heaven is as full of love as it can hold. We are 
here a good way from that as yet. But we are com- 
ing to it, however slowly. We know that we shall 
come to it wholly one of these days, and that our 
Lord's prayer, and our. His people's prayer, will 
surely be fulfilled, " On earth as it is in heaven." 

QUITTING HIS OBSERVATORY 

His observatory is not the astronomer's home. He 
is interested, is absorbed for a time in his transit, his 
equatorial, his meridional circle, spectroscope, astro- 
nomical clock, and other instruments. He spends the 
whole night with them, it may be. When the day 
dawns he is glad to quit the dome for his home, the 
stars for the sun, silent contemplation of the heav- 
ens for the companionship of wife, children and 
friends. 

The eye is but a telescope. We use it for noting 
what is going on in the world about us. The body is 
the observatory in which it is mounted for convenience 
of observation. We use it during the starlight of our 
stay on the earth. When the clear day of heaven 
dawns, we are glad to leave instrument and observa- 

57 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

tory behind us and to join our friends in that home 
which has no need of sun, moon or stars to lighten 
it — ^that city whose gates are not shut at all by day, 
and where there is no night. 



58 



Ill 



A NEW CHIME OF OLD BELLS 

Going to service one Sunday morning, I was seized 
with a pleasurable surprise as all of a sudden the city 
bells rang out with the accord of their joyous tones. 
Subdued and blended by the intervening hillside, some 
notes as of a familiar church-tune came to my ear. 
Is it the '' Reformed " or " Trinity," I at once asked 
myself, that has so quietly during the past week put 
a new chime into its old bell-tower? Listening more 
intently I soon distinguished the sounds of the in- 
dividual bells of the different churches. My next 
thought was. What, after all, if the bells of adjacent 
churches were really tuned in groups and rung as a 
chime? Some by preconcerted arrangement pealing 
forth notes for the line, " How pleased and blest was 
I " ; others taking up the refrain, " To hear the peo- 
ple cry " ; and others following with, " Come, let us 
seek our God to-day." Such a united call from all 
the churches, what a delightful sense would it give 
of the oneness of all Christians in worship if not in 
creed ! 

NEIGHBORLINESS NEXT TO GODLINESS 

Wholly taken up with the decent semblance of re- 
ligion, formalism ignores morality. Fancying that 

59 



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God is pleased with the shows of outward worship, 
the over-devout formaHst feels himself at liberty to 
treat his fellow-men with a rudeness or injustice 
which upright, though perhaps prayerless persons 
would scorn to commit. Hence that unseemly yok- 
ing together of strenuous piety with sickening de- 
pravity which our Lord so aptly describes as " strain- 
ing out a gnat and swallowing a camel." 

The men thus satirized by Christ were a set of re- 
ligionists who maintained that a man might keep the 
first table of the law so punctiliously that he need not 
keep the second table at all; might serve God so de- 
voutly that he could without blame hate men as cor- 
dially as he pleased; who imagined that they could 
so hoodwink God by bribes and flattery that He 
would care little whether or how much they abused 
their neighbors. Making the law of no effect through 
their traditional glosses and false interpretations, 
where their lives did not fit God's pattern they 
changed the pattern to fit their lives — strangling the 
law under show of embracing it. 

In strongest opposition to these Pharisaic notions 
the Bible everywhere puts morality before what is 
generally termed piety; doing right before praying; 
duty to our fellow-men before direct duties to God. 
Even in the Old Testament God made it to be clearly 
understood that He cares nothing for religious forms 
in themselves. " I have," He says, " forms and offer- 
ings enough of my own, if that were what I wanted. 
The beasts of the forest are mine, and the cattle on 

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a thousand hills. If I were hungry I would not tell 
thee. . . . Offer unto the Lord the sacrifices of 
righteousness." '' Seek judgment, relieve the op- 
pressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." 
" Make all right with your fellow-men, and after that 
I will make all right with you." 

In the New Testament the teaching is the same; 
only if possible more full and emphatic. It was by 
such preaching that John prepared the people to re- 
ceive Christ. When told of Christ's coming and how 
important it was that they should be ready to receive 
Him, the people " asked Him saying, What shall we 
do then?" 

" He that hath two coats let him impart to him that 
hath none ; and he that hath meat let him do likewise." 

^' Then came also publicans to be baptized and said 
to Him, Master, what shall we do ? " 

" Exact no more than that which is appointed you." 

" And the soldiers likewise demanded of Him, say- 
ing. And what shall we do ? " 

" Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely ; 
and be content with your wages." 

Thus was a pure and honorable morality the trumpet 
by which the coming of Jesus was heralded to the 
world. 

AN UNWELCOME GIFT 

Our Lord taught nothing more pointedly than that 
unneighborly acts are a complete bar to acceptable 
worship. 

6i 



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" First, be reconciled to thy brother." You have 
come bringing a gift to the altar of worship ; to render 
praise, offer thanksgiving, seek forgiveness for your 
sins, drop money into the Lord's treasury. Before 
bending your knees in adoration, singing your hymn 
or making your contribution, you think of some un- 
righted wrong done to a neighbor — unpaid debt, un- 
fair bargain, rude discourtesy, tale-bearing, kindness 
repaid by neglect, pretext of injury received when you 
were yourself the injurer. What Jesus would have 
the very first sight of His altar do for you, the intend- 
ing worshipper, is to quicken remembrance of wrongs 
which it has hitherto been convenient for you to for- 
get. What would He have you do? Go on with your 
worship? No ; " Leave there thy gift before the altar." 
Leave it before the altar, but do not put it on the altar. 
It is a defiled gift, and will not be accepted. Let 
the prayer go unsaid, the psalm go unsung, the money 
stay awhile in thy purse. You have come to make 
your acknowledgments to God; but there are other 
acknowledgments which are more important just now, 
and which He says you must make first or He will not 
accept those made to Himself. First, be reconciled 
to thy brother. God wants the first table of the 
law kept, but not at the expense of the second. 
He would not suffer broken tables to be put into 
His ark nor to be brought into His sanctuary. 
Whole tables must be brought in or none. What 
is technically called " religion " ; prayer, thanksgiv- 
ing, confession, are good; but they are not good, 

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they are worse than useless if disjoined from a 
high-toned, right-minded, honorable treatment of our 
fellow-men. Unless wrong done to our neighbor be 
righted, devotion of whatever kind is of absolutely no 
account whatever in the sight of God. That wronged 
brother is also a child of God; and would you as a 
father smile on the man who has done some grievous 
wrong to your child and who leaves the wrong un- 
acknowledged ? What would that be but to wink at 
the indignity and outrage? 

It may be that some who are not Christians are say- 
ing to themselves, " That is what I like ; that is a 
comfort to me." I am glad if you like it and glad if 
it is a comfort to you; although I did not say it for 
that, but because it is true. It is a comfort to any 
man that he is not mean, selfish, or underhanded in 
his treatment of his fellows. It is a comfort to be 
tenderly, honestly, nobly mindful of the rights, good 
name, prosperity, and happiness of one's neighbors. 
And there are men out of the church as well as 
in the church who have this stamp of nobility and 
honor. 

We say to such men, You are on the right road ; but 
you have by no means completed your journey. You 
need to be devout towards God as well as upright to- 
wards men. 

To the offender against morality Jesus does indeed 
say, " Put not thy gift on the altar." He does not say, 
" Take away from the altar thy gift." " Leave there 
thy gift before the altar and go thy way. First, be 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

reconciled to thy brother " ; but there is a second ; 
" Then come and offer thy gift." 

This explains in what sense morality is more im- 
portant than piety. Here is an old stubble field, and 
I would sow it to wheat. Which is more important to be 
done first, sowing or plowing? Plowing certainly, 
since without that the sowing would be labor lost. 
But I do not stop with the plowing. So Jesus says 
we must not stop with the strictest morality. If every- 
thing is right in the home, in the office, shop and store, 
in society, then I may go to Christ about my personal 
relations with Him. From the altar thus revisited I 
shall bear away the inward consolation of an accepted 
gift. 

A FOOTPATH VENTURE 

*' Good evening," I said to a gentleman whom I 
overtook, a little ago, as I was returning from our 
mid-week evening prayer-meeting. 

" We are strangers," I continued, " but after all, 
we are neighbors in a way, and if you don't mind, I 
would like to tell you of a new thought that has just 
come to me." 

This was quite unconventional, of course. I knew 
also that it was a venture, and that the familiarity of 
my address might be resented as an impertinent in- 
trusion. 

The stranger's prompt reply, " Certainly. I would 
be glad to hear it," proved my warrant for having 
taken the risk. 

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" Well," I said, " you know how much is being said 
nowadays about ' success ' in lectures, magazines, 
newspapers and books. ' What is '' success " ? ' I have 
been asking myself; and I have come to define it as 
' The doing of that which I set out to do.' If I do 
what I set out to do, I succeed. All depends, then, on 
what I set out to do. Should I set out to fly to the 
moon, or to become a multi-millionaire. President of 
the United States, or a super-Shakespearian poet, I 
should be in the one case so sure, and in the others 
so likely, to fail, that it would be wiser for me not to 
try. Should I set out to out-gain, to out-build, out- 
furnish, out-speed, out-dress, out-be jewel, or, in any 
other way, outshine some envied and emulated society- 
star, possibly I might make it out, but the chances 
would be so much against me that it were safer to at- 
tempt something more promising of success. 

'' My new thought is, that there is a kind of suc- 
cess which every one who cares for it may have. It is 
this. 

" Everywhere are persons in need of help — poverty 
to be relieved, sorrow to be comforted, despondency to 
be cheered, faint-heartedness to be encouraged, doubts 
to be cleared, faltering and uncertain steps to be led, 
loneliness longing for heart-felt companionship. Of 
such are always those who will gratefully accept of- 
fered assistance. If, then, what I set out to do is to 
render such relief, I am bound to succeed — a most 
true, worthy, and heart-satisfying success." 

Possibly, the most which I had any right to expect 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

in the way of rejoinder would have been a polite 
stranger's quiet tolerance of a perhaps ill-timed and 
ill-placed homily. Instead of that came at once this 
genial response. 

'' I agree with you, in both principle and practice. 
I am myself one of a Society to relieve the poor of 
the city of Boston. We do it by family visitation. 
We have divided the city into sections. My section 
contains 15,000 inhabitants. My work is to find out 
those in my district who are in need and to relieve 
them. We make no distinction as to race or creed." 
A grand success, certainly. 

Two practical applications. 

1. Running the risk of an unsocial repulse may 
issue in the happy discovery of a wholly unlooked-for 
nobility of character. 

2. While priding ourselves on having formulated 
what we are supposing to be a new original theory of 
life, likely as not we may encounter those; not only 

" Whose faith, through form, is pure as ours " ; 

but more than that, those 

" Whose hands are quicker unto good." 

WEANED 

The mother perseveres in weaning her child, be- 
cause she knows what the child does not know, that 
it is for the child's best good. In her secret wisdom 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

she appeals from the infant callow to the infant 
fledged. The crying, the struggling, the clamorous 
insisting would, she is sure, cease at once, could the 
rebellious little one only be made to understand to what 
as well as from what it is being weaned — from one 
single and confined source and way of satisfying its 
hunger to the numberless and diversified sources and 
ways which love will provide for the increasing de- 
mands of its appetite and growth. She foresees, too, 
how thankfully the now insubmissive nursling will, in 
due time, approve the kind compulsion which breaks it 
off from the old ways and starts it upon the new. 

So far as true learning has outgrown its babyhood, 
it has come about only through a long succession of 
enforced and reluctantly accepted weanings. With 
what infantile pertinacity have philosophers and 
physicists, pedagogues and politicians, dogmatists and 
doctrinaires clung to their prematurely-formed and 
ambitiously-announced speculations — whole centuries 
of weaning taken up in the making of an astronomer 
out of an astrologer, of a chemist out of an alchemist, 
of a statesman out of a politician ; out of a translator 
a reviser, and out of a religious dogmatist a true theo- 
logian ! 

After all, what in its deepest import is all this 
weaning but a sensible giving up of that pride of 
reason which boasts itself equal to the quick fathom- 
ing of " all mysteries and all knowledge " in exchange 
for that humility which acknowledges the bounds 
which nature has set to the triumphs of the human 

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understanding; for that modesty which led Newton 
to compare himself to the little child picking up a 
pebble here and there, on the shore of the vast ocean 
of truth; which brings a highly-honored chemist to 
confess that an eighty years' siege by Front's hypoth- 
esis has thus far failed to capture the " citadel of the 
atom " ; which has caused many an abashed Temanite, 
Shuhite and Naamathite to give up trying to solve 
the time-old problems of the origin of evil, the pros- 
perity of the wicked and the afflictions of the right- 
eous; which voices the meek surrender of the once 
proud but now submissive Psalmist : " Lord, my heart 
is not haughty nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I ex- 
ercise myself in great matters, or in things too high 
for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as 
a child that is weaned of his mother : my soul is even 
as a weaned child." 

TWO SUMMERS 

Looking out in the dead of winter over his snow- 
imprisoned acres, the farmer (but that he has been 
otherwise instructed by experience) might exclaim 
despairingly, '' What can I do to be saved from 
threatened hunger and starvation? To melt this for- 
bidding mass of snow and ice is beyond my most 
earnest and toilsome endeavor. Were I even to cut 
and burn a hundred forests, the mighty hecatomb 
would not suffice to warm the soil or quicken the seed 
or ripen the harvest on a single field." 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

True. But coming already on its way is the sum- 
mer ; God's loving offer of help to His children in their 
mortal need, and ready, otherwise, to perish. 

His offer accepted, on what a scene of rejoicing 
activity does the Father look complacently down — a 
million plows turning the soil on hillsides and in 
valleys, by great rivers and on boundless prairies ; har- 
vests shouted home by myriads of exultant reapers; 
happy households gathered around bountifully spread 
tables ; the great globe's teeming population kept alive 
and saved. 

What of the unspeakably greater good to be secured 
for the soul? How supply its famishing hunger with 
the bread of life ? 

'' Looking at my heart and life," says one, " I be- 
hold a scene more wild and desolate than snow- 
wrapped fields; more despairingly enchained by more 
than Arctic frosts of pride, covetousness, envy, worldly 
ambition, self-righteousness and unbelief. Though 
art, taste, refinement and philosophy were to kindle all 
their fires and compass me with all their brilliant and 
crackling flames, they could not thaw the icy impeni- 
tence of my soul; could not cause to spring one holy 
desire or ripen one holy act." 

True, again. But if God give one summer for the 
life of the body, " how much more " will He give an- 
other for the life of the soul ! 

Shall I be forever deploring, then, as though it were 
a just cause or excuse for despondency, that unless 
some all-powerful Friend undertake for me, I can 

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never repent, believe, and love unto salvation and 
eternal life? 

From all such deprecatory and despairing negatives 
God's full provision and loving promise bid me wholly 
and at once to break away; bid me leap, rather, to 
say with most grateful though most humble positive- 
ness, " Without Christ I could indeed do nothing, but 
such is not my case. I have Christ and with Him I 
can do all things." 

PERFECT AT LAST 

The schoolboy's crooked up-and-down strokes on 
the first page of his copy-book are to the onlooker an 
almost ludicrous contrast to the finely engraved model 
above; a discouraging contrast, no doubt, to the pupil 
himself. The last line on the page shows a noticeable, 
perhaps, but still very distant approach to the perfect 
strokes at the top. Yet through each successive page 
the improvement continues until at the end of the 
many-leaved book is a line of which the pleased and 
patient master is pleased to say, " That, my boy, is as 
well done as I could have done it myself." 

" Perfect as your Father which is in heaven is per- 
fect " is no mere tantalizing theory, no impossible 
command. There have been heart-heroes who have 
said, " It shall be done," and who have done it. Paul 
does not encourage or excuse any half-hearted " beat- 
ing of the air " by saying, " I am trying hard as ever 
I can to keep my body under." He keeps it under. 
Stephen does not try merely to keep his temper be- 

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fore the prejudiced and persecuting council with its 
suborned false witnesses. He keeps it; keeps it per- 
fectly. When at length he feels the thud of the cruel 
stones, his " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge " 
is a perfect echo of the '' Father, forgive them " of 
Him who had felt the thrust of the cruel spear. 

Our trying is a poor trying enough at first, but 
our faith being fuller of force than our trying is of 
faults, we do not give over until at length we suc- 
ceed so well that the Master smiles upon us an ap- 
proving and rewarding, " I could Myself have done it 
no better." 

AN ORIGINAL GUEST 

No matter how elaborate or abundant such an enter- 
tainment as that of the marriage-feast in Cana of 
Galilee might be in other particulars ; in one particular 
there must be no failure — the wine must not give out. 
But it begins to be apparent at a certain stage of that 
banquet that it is likely to break down in that, as 
it was then regarded, most important part. An ill- 
natured guest would have said unkind things about 
the slenderness of the provision. Deeply concerned 
for the reputation of the bridegroom and his friends, 
Mary applies to Jesus to help them out of their diffi- 
culty. He kindly supplies what is lacking. He not 
only by his presence approves and encourages the 
enjoyment of the occasion, but he takes up the feast 
when it is likely to fail and makes it a success. He 

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rescues the banquet from the reproach which would 
otherwise have been sure to follow and makes it 
honorable. He saves the feast from a mortifying de- 
cline and prolongs it in undiminished credit and en- 
joyment to the end. 

In its beginning the world's entertainment promises 
well. " Every man at the beginning sets forth that 
which is good." Everything is bright and sparkling 
to the young. Every relation, enterprise and occupa- 
tion promises well at the start. Every new home 
gives promise of contentment and of pure and grow- 
ing affection. Every scheme, ordinance or system 
devised by men for their common protection, improve- 
ment or happiness is full of hope in its beginning. 
The founders of dynasties, governments and institu- 
tions are grandly optimistic. But who can say that 
affairs may not take so disastrous a turn as to justify 
the forebodings of the most gloomy pessimist ? Herac- 
litus bewailed with weeping the wickedness of men; 
Democritus jeered at their follies. But the tears of 
the one and the laughter of the other spoke alike the 
failure of men in their search for a happiness that 
should not only satisfy, but endure. 

Jesus redeems life from this failure. He saves it 
from the laughter of fools on the one hand, and from 
the sneers of cynics on the other. He keeps it from 
becoming either tragedy or comedy. He takes up 
the feast where the guests were ready to abandon it 
in disgust or despair, prolongs it with honor and 
makes it a success. With Christ in his heart, no man 

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need ever outlive any true enjoyment of the world. 
Christ in the heart keeps pure and fresh the Chris- 
tian's love for nature, for his friends, for society, for 
literature, science and art. He that loves the Bible 
keeps relish for all good books. He that takes Christ 
with him finds unabated enjoyment in all rational so- 
cial festivity. The Christian is no complainer, no mis- 
anthropist, morose and soured with the world. He 
enjoys life more and longer than he does or can who 
has not Christ for a friend and fellow-guest. Christ 
is staying power to the spirit. The Christian outstays 
the worldling, even at the world's own banqueting 
table. 

VARNISH AND VITALITY 

Once, in a dry time in summer, I brought out my 
hose to dash with water the vines of the honeysuckle 
clustered about the posts and railing of the front 
porch, and where, therefore, they were seen by all. 
A minute's showering sufficed to give to the dry and 
dusty leaves a June freshness and brightness. A vain 
and superficial vine would be quite satisfied with this, 
failing to consider how transient this freshening and 
brightening must be, and how soon the dull and dry 
look will come back, to be gotten rid of again only by 
repeated artificial affusion. A thoughtful vine would 
entreat, *' Send the water plentifully about my roots, 
and I will gloss my own leaves with a lustre that will 
stay. They shall not only seem to be of a brilliant 

7Z 



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green, they shall be really so, made lustrous, not by 
momentary dashes of water from without, but by the 
energy of vivifying sap from within/' 

1. Here lies the difference between communism 
and the methods and rewards of individual industry 
and enterprise. Shower the communist with a rain 
of gold. That will give him for a time the appear- 
ance of a man of force and thrift. But it will be an 
appearance only. The brightness of content and com- 
fort will soon fade, and to renew it the idler and vaga- 
bond must be periodically regilt. The honest man, 
the manly man, says, on the contrary, '' Keep your 
varnish for knaves and paupers. What I want, and 
all I want, is a chance for the exertion of my powers. 
Give me materials with which to work, and a chance 
to work, and I will provide my own comforts — will 
build my own house, buy my own clothes, and set my 
own table." 

2. Here, too, is the difference between mere im- 
pression and self-e^rpression by means of ordinances 
of worship and of instruction in Christian truth. Dry 
and sapless, fruitless and flowerless people, get them- 
selves freshened up by attendance on enlivening re- 
ligious services — fine singing and eloquent preaching. 
But this is spasmodic and periodical. The water of 
affusion soon dries off, and the momentary vividness 
fades into the dryness and deadness of the old world- 
liness. Only that is felt which comes down on their 
passive minds from without. Living souls, on the 
other hand, receive the truth of Christ into their in- 

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most hearts, to reappear in the abiding freshness and 
beauty of a steadfastly holy life. 

APART AND IN SECRET 

To get the most and the best out of a heap of grain, 
the grain must, first of all, be scattered. The sower 
is a separator. He is also a concealer. Let him keep 
his seed-corn always in the open, and let him deal with 
it only by the bagful, and how plentiful a crop will 
he be likely to get out of it? That, too, however 
lively a shaking up he might now and then give to the 
bag! 

This close companionship must, instead, be broken 
up for a time in order that each separate seed may 
have in secret its own little dark cell of earth whence 
its individual life may spring forth, and where it may 
be individually nourished — the seeds thus scattered 
soon to be reassembled, it is true, but in what a more 
fruitful and therefore more glorious fashion! In- 
stead of being grouped passively together, they now 
stand together in joyous harvesting array, offering 
to a hungry and waiting world some thirty, some 
sixty, some a hundred-fold of life in return for the 
life they have themselves received. 

In our growing fondness for huge evangelical as- 
semblies, is there a possible danger lest the religion 
of Jesus be pressed for acceptance in too impersonal 
a way as the religion for the world at large, and as a 
consequence it be lost sight of, that it is, to begin with, 
for each and every one of us as individuals, most 

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simple in its essence and precisely the same for all, 
whatever the age, the sex, the race or the condition? 

But did not Jesus call together and address the mul- 
titudes? Yes, but not as multitudes. Most careful 
was He to individualize them. He said " thou," and 
" thy." He made it the privilege and duty of each 
and every one to hold separate, trustful, loving com- 
munion with his Heavenly Father ; " And thou, when 
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou 
hast shut thy door, pray." This " thou " of our Lord 
applies just as truly to Chinaman, Filipino, African, 
Indian or South Sea Islander as it does to the most 
enlightened of worshippers in the most Christian of 
lands. 

Is it not here that we have the real ground and 
guaranty for the much-sought-for church unification, 
rather than in the increasing frequency or bulk of 
ecclesiastical, humanitarian, or theological councils, 
conferences or convocations? The Master's closet of 
secret prayer is the true equalizer, the surest antidote 
against race prejudice and class separation; the one 
perfect and blessed unifier of those who thus pray, as 
loved and loving children of the one common Father 
of them all. 

And what glorious congregations we are yet to 
have — ^brethren thus in heart as well as in name — 
what wider and nobler companionship of souls made 
ripe for Christian fellowship and strong for Christian 
work when to our great assemblies each one shall 
come with a love that has been quickened to a new 

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upspringing, fruit-bearing activity in that dearest and 
most sacred of all places of heavenly communion — ^the 
closet of secret prayer. 

VULTURE AND DOVE 

So distinctively is the spirit of God a spirit of peace 
and confiding gentleness that the dove, which is its 
emblem, takes readily by symbolic fitness to the care 
and protection of men. Secure in the house prepared 
for it, though it be one of unbarred door and open 
windows, it neither fears nor suspects harm, as it has 
no wish or thought of harming others. 

But is not this gentle, peaceable, confiding disposi- 
tion a constant menace to its very existence ? Does it 
not make the dove an easy victim of all ravenous 
birds of prey, leaving it utterly without defence 
against the grasping claw and tearing beak of hawk, 
eagle, and vulture? Must not their crafty rapacity 
always prove more than a match for its unwary weak- 
ness? And must not it and all its kind, therefore, in 
time, wholly perish and, through " survival of the 
fittest," leave to the fierce, the unscrupulous and the 
devouring full possession of the field? 

The drift of things indicates already, and God is 
pledged to show, one of these days, beyond all fur- 
ther doubt or discussion, what that is which He 
judges fittest to survive — whether the meek, the gentle 
and the lowly, or that which from its stealthy perch 
watches for a sure moment in which to swoop down, 
seize, bear away and destroy. The success of hawks 

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and vultures lies only in keeping themselves at a safe 
distance from the home-enclosures of men. Yet are 
they not by any means, as they complacently imagine, 
beyond reach always of the fowler's eye or marks- 
man's ball. And when, struck at last by the aveng- 
ing bolt, the disturber and destroyer tumbles from 
his proud eyrie, none are sorry and all are glad. 

Year by year we see the noxious, even in nature, 
driven back within ever-narrowing circles, presaging 
its utter and final extinction. It may still have fur- 
ther lease of existence, but on one condition only — 
that it stop hurting; that it cease betraying the un- 
suspecting and harming the helpless. There are 
chances ahead for the despot who shall see his mis- 
take and be done with his despotism ; for the envious, 
the malicious, the discourteous, the covetous, who 
shall quit their envy, their malice, their discourtesies 
and their greed. The asp and the cockatrice may sur- 
vive, provided they no longer shoot poison from fang 
and eye, and so become harmless playmates of the little 
child. The " bear " may survive, if he can make up 
his mind to feed peaceably "with the cow," and the 
'' lion," if he will learn to '' eat straw like the ox." 

More and more relentless and persistent must pur- 
suit to the death be of all wrong, outrage and in- 
justice against even the weakest, most uncomplaining 
and unresisting of our fellows — the pursuit kept up 
unfalteringly till the last unrepenting tyrant and tor- 
menter shall, with the last viper and vulture, have 
perished from the earth. 

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In that good time coming the meek shall flourish 
and shall possess the land. When those who have 
kept themselves apart from their fellows in the selfish 
seclusions of place and power shall have been brought 
low, then shall room, and honor, and power, and 
plenty be given to the lowly. 

The fittest will survive. No vulture to vex longer 
the freedom of the upper sky, the whole wide air shall 
thenceforward be safe and shall everywhere be win- 
nowed only by the soft wings of peace. 

THE LOWER ENNOBLED BY THE HIGHER 

We are not necessarily low-lived although we be 
ever so keenly alive to that which is low. To be 
low-lived is to be satisfied with that which is low. It 
is not his fondness for eating that makes the glutton. 
It is that eating is what he most cares for and lives 
for. The enthusiastic student enjoys the pleasures 
of a well-spread table, and enjoys them none the less, 
but rather more, because of his fondness for study. 
Be his relish for books never so keen, he is still not in 
the least ashamed to boast that he has a good appetite 
and a good cook. 

Yet, let the student, also, beware. Is he so wholly 
given to study that he begins to care less and less for 
his friends? Has the young man or woman away at 
school or college found home-love dying out of his 
or her heart? To that extent, then, is he or she low- 
lived. It was of such a one, a favorite daughter, that 

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a sorrowful father once said to me, " True, I have 
gained a scholar, but I have lost a child ! " 

There is the like warning, too, for fathers and 
mothers — for fathers so devoted to business, club- 
life, or politics; for mothers so surrendered to the 
exactions of social or even philanthropic ambition 
as to justify the children's lament; "True, we have 
gained a captain of industry, finance, letters or art; 
true, we have gained a society-star, but we have lost 
a father, a mother, and a home." To the extent of 
such parental neglect, such husbands, wives, fathers 
and mothers are low-lived. It is but a kind of self- 
degradation; the sacrificing of a higher form of life 
to a lower. 

Not that there is in this the least implied censure 
of any sort whatever of worldly ambition, enterprise 
or success. God is Himself the greatest of legislators 
and rulers, of farm, forest and mine proprietors; of 
geometricians, architects and artists. Take a good 
look at Solomon in all his glory, and then consider 
God's lilies. He likes to see His children, made in 
His own image, till farms, develop mines, plan great 
engineering works, build dwelling-houses, ware- 
houses, ships, halls of legislation, justice, science and 
art. " Every house is built by some man." This is 
all secular, indeed ; but it is, or should be, much more 
than that. There is, or should be, a sacredness in it 
all. Such sacredness there is for the builder who 
reverently considers that " He who made all things 
is God " ; and that among the " all things " is the 

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builder Himself. The crown and radiance of the 
whole world's business ambition and enterprise is this 
filial recognition of the Father's love. Let this thank- 
ful acknowledgment be wanting, and God may well 
complain, '' True, I have gained a husbandman, an 
engineer, an architect, a jurist, a statesman, a general, 
an orator, a financier, an artist, a scholar; but, alas, 
I have lost a child ! " 

The worldling is he to whom the world is all and 
all. And herein is the world's sin. 

"ISMS" AND "ISTS" 

1. When used as a suffix to a person's name, as in 
"Platonism," " Csesarism," " Cobdenism," "Moham- 
medanism," "ism" denotes certain opinions (usually 
in philosophy, economics or religion) first given by 
such person to the world ; and " ist " one who makes 
such opinions his own, although perhaps without the 
zeal of an advocate in their propagation. 

2. Other " isms " are simply and impersonally de- 
clarative of opinions, as " deism," " monotheism," 
" socialism," " agrarianism." 

3. Others imply the attaching of undue and one- 
sided importance to a sentiment or system in itself 
lawful and good ; as " despotism," ruling for the sake 
of ruling, the governed for the governor instead of 
the governor for the governed, the ship for the rud- 
der instead of the rudder for the ship. Or, as " fa- 
naticism" — uncharitable fury uncontrolled by reason 
in the advocacy of opinion. 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

4. In other cases still " ism " means simply either 
the denying and repudiating of certain systems or 
assertions, as " nihilism," having nothing to do with 
civil government ; '' atheism," having nothing to do 
with God; or merely professed ignorance as to the 
truth of certain tenets or beliefs, as " agnosticism." 

There are, therefore, both good " isms " and bad. 
What Truth and Right aim at is either the enlighten- 
ing of blind " isms " and " ists," or the expanding to 
something broader and more comprehensive of that 
which is narrow and contracted. 

GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS 

Some of the most fruitful Sunday-school work any- 
where done has been done in log-cabin settlements in 
the distant West. Now, with our luxuriously-ap- 
pointed churches, chapel and Sunday-school rooms, 
well-filled libraries, " lesson-helps " without number, 
and fine vocal and instrumental music, why are such 
meagre spiritual results so much debated and de- 
plored ? 

More than a place to work in, tools to work with 
and materials to work up, is the workman himself. 
The place may be a poor one, the tools scanty and 
rude, the materials unpromising, yet a workman whose 
heart is thoroughly in his work may have more to 
show for it in the end than another, although in every 
respect better equipped, but who having no clear and 
earnest aim is satisfied with simply going through the 
prescribed motions. 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

The most devoted and conscientious teachers and 
preachers are the ones who most fully realize and who 
most dread the danger of professionalism in their 
work — the danger, in other words, of being satisfied 
with simply going through the motions. So much 
easier is formalism than spiritual fidelity, that with 
those not thus heartily and prayerfully devoted to 
their work, the mistake most likely to be made is that 
of devising and organizing some new motions to be 
gone through with. 

THE FIRST AND SECOND BIRTHS 

To attain completeness of body or mind we need, so 
far as mere capability is concerned, but the growing 
life-energy with which we are born. The infant's 
brain, hand and foot are already perfect, save in size, 
and in due time as a simple matter of course complete 
size will also be attained. Once made, the child does 
not need to be re-made. Samson needed not to be 
born again in order that he might pull down the pil- 
lars of Dagon's temple; or Cleopatra, to become the 
most beautiful woman of her time ; or Angelo, to ex- 
cel in architecture; or La Place, in. astronomy; Bee- 
thoven in music, or Webster, in law, eloquence and 
statesmanship. 

" Is this little boy of yours well up in mathematics, 
chemistry, physics or mental and moral science ? " 
" No," answers the father, " he is too young yet, but 
I am expecting him to grow to it all one of these days. 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Time and study will do it. They will of themselves 
be the making of him as a scholar and a man." 

Is the like true of the spiritual in us? Some there 
are who say so ; some who deny both the fact and the 
need of spiritual regeneration; maintaining, as they 
do, that here also generation is enough; that in the 
first birth spiritual growth and completeness are po- 
tentially given ; that we are at birth as truly alive spir- 
itually as we are physically and mentally; that just 
as a child needs but to be introduced at the right age 
to each of the different studies of his course, in order 
that he may grasp and enjoy them, so will he, in due 
course of development, come just as naturally and 
just as surely to understand, enjoy and practically 
apply moral and spiritual truth; that beholding in 
His Works and Word the glory of God, he will be 
changed gradually into the same image; not by the 
" Spirit of the Lord," but by the naturally assimilative 
power of his own spirit. 

Some people's prospects for heaven would un- 
doubtedly, so it seems to us at least, be vastly improved 
could they only be born again in that literal sense in 
which Nicodemus took the declaration of Jesus — ^born, 
that is, of better parents who would give to their 
second childhood better teaching and greater encour- 
agements to right living and with fewer things to 
lead them astray. But since by even such a second 
birth as that Nicodemus could not in his own estima- 
tion have " stood fairer for the Kingdom of God 
than as a born Israelite he already stood," Jesus at 

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once explains to him the spiritual nature of the new 
birth; declares the need of it to be universal; sweeps 
away at a breath the idea of the sufficiency in order 
to salvation of all mere human endeavor; asserts in 
the most clear and positive way that what men need 
for the attainment of righteousness is not any new 
philosophy of life, but a new life; that not one, even 
of the most naturally favored of men, can grow for 
himself a new heart, which must ever be a free gift 
from above, and that no man, unless re-born of water 
and the Spirit, can '' enter " or even '' see '' the king- 
dom of God. 

Authority on a great matter like this, for those who 
accept it as supreme and final, precludes further specu- 
lation, questioning or debate. Having fullest confi- 
dence in Jesus as '' a teacher sent from God,'' Nico- 
demus, with becoming modesty and humility, yields 
his acknowledged Master's right to choose his own 
topic and to lead in the conversation. " Hear ye Him " 
is the most reasonable command for all such as have 
first accepted as from heaven that other declaration, 
" This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased." 

UNUSED SPICES 

Love is love, however blind or mistaken its methods. 
Were the " spices" which the Marys and the '' others 
with them " brought to the sepulchre, in sorrowing 
love for their buried Lord, less odorous or precious 
because not needed? 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Our careful and costly preparations for doing some 
special work for the Master may turn out to have 
been utterly wasted. We find things to be quite 
the opposite of what we expected. Health gives out 
at the very moment of intended action; or, through 
unlooked-for reverses, the means fail just at the last 
for doing what we had set our hearts on accomplishing. 
The devoted Lowrie goes down in the Bay of Bengal 
with the ship which is nearing the land, to bless which 
with his missionary labors he had made long and ex- 
pensive preparation. 

A father has planned to give the best education he 
can to an only son ; but the son dies on the very thresh- 
old of his educational career. The father's generous 
hands are stayed and held. 

In what strange perplexities are we thus sometimes 
overwhelmingly plunged! How inscrutable God's 
dealings with us and ours! 

But not always, and not for long, does the Father 
mean that His children shall be kept in harrowing 
suspense, nor long be balked in the expression of 
their love. Men, in shining garments, appear to the 
baffled and wondering disciples with words of ex- 
planation, of promise and of larger hope. The love 
of these faithful disciples shall find expression still — 
only in higher, purer and more joyous ways. How 
much better, heart-satisfying worship of a risen and 
ever-living Saviour, than spices, however odorous and 
costly, for a dead and buried Christ! 

It may be, instead, that' the way to our intended 

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work proves to be more open to us than we had at 
first thought. We may find the stone rolled away 
for us — an obstacle removed we could not have our- 
selves surmounted' — so that we can enter more 
quickly, even than we had supposed, the field of our 
purposed deed of love. But then the field itself we 
find to be altogether abandoned. That on which we 
were about to bestow our labor is gone ; we know not 
whither. 

A mother makes a long and tedious journey to 
see a sick child, taking with her carefully-prepared 
gifts for her child's relief and comfort. But she has 
no sooner come than she is told that her child is 
no longer living. What now of the gifts, of which 
her loving hands are full? The dear one, on whom 
she is ready to bestow them, is no longer here to 
receive them. 

With God, motive governs and determines the re- 
ward. The motive right and pure, lamented mistakes 
turn always, in the end, to joyous surprises. 

What became of those first Sunday's spices? They 
have a precious existence still. Although unused, 
yet, like the spikenard, that was used before His 
burial, they at once took on the power of living and 
most persuasive speech. " Wherever this Gospel is 
preached," with what a tongue do they tell even us 
of the ignorance and unbelief of our sorrow, and of 
the greater, more exalted and more glorious scope of 
God's plans respecting Jesus and ourselves! 

Odorous spices and beautiful flowers, if you will; 

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you who drop unbidden tears over the graves of your 
loved ones^ — spices and flowers and tears, but never, 
with them, words of lamentation and despair. Let our 
thoughts rather be of angels, in shining garments, 
with whom the ascended souls of our departed are 
even now walking, and of Jesus, who walks with 
them evermore by the banks of the river of life. 

THE SUCCESSFUL PLEA 

The sure way to the ear and heart of God is an 
acknowledgment of unworthiness. No man who sin- 
cerely makes this acknowledgment fails in his suit. " I 
am not worthy of all the mercies and of all the truth 
which thou hast showed unto thy servant,'' brought 
loving answer to Jacob's prayer for deliverance from 
Esau. " Who am I and what is my house that thou 
hast brought me hitherto?" is the self-renouncing 
preface to David's prayer for a perpetual blessing on 
his reign. It is with a smile of pity at their ignorance 
of Jesus that we hear the Jewish elders interceding 
with Him for the centurion's servant, on the ground 
"that he was worthy for whom He should do this." 
And this is followed by a thrill of admiration at the 
truer apprehension and stronger faith of the centurion 
himself, shown by the very opposite plea, *^ Lord, 
trouble not thyself, for I am not worthy that thou 
shouldest enter under my roof." 

Every humble, candid man makes the self-same plea 
before God, and wishes to make no other. " I am not 
worthy to be called thy son," was the only word the 

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prodigal could use, or found it in his heart to use, 
when he '' arose and came to his father/' Had he 
found himself really about to '* perish " in the fields 
among the swine, that is the word he would have 
directed to be written above his grave. " Unworthy " 
might then have met the grieving father's eye, in- 
stead of falling, as it did, on the rejoicing father's 
ear. And just that is what all grave-stones, if truly 
inscribed, must say to the eye of the Heavenly Father 
from whom all have gone astray. But more may now 
be inscribed, seeing that the prodigal lived to return 
and has given us proof of the Father's tenderest com- 
passion. Beneath the Prodigal's heart-broken " Un- 
worthy," there may now be carved the ring, the shoes, 
the robe, and the table laden with the feast. What 
inscription and what emblems could more truly or 
touchingly befit the burial-tablet of any dear child of 
God? 

COMMON-SENSE, FAITH AND IGNORANCE 

The acting out of true religion, as we find it un- 
folded in one of our Lord's parables, is made up in 
about equal parts of Common-Sense, Faith and Ig- 
norance. The husbandman " casts seed into the 
ground." That is his common-sense. This done, he 
" sleeps and rises night and day," in full confidence 
that the seed will '' spring and grow up." That is 
his faith. But, it is added, he " knoweth not how." 
That is his ignorance. 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE ^ 

For the doer of the things that most need to be 
done, this '' how " is a question which may either be 
ignored or the consideration of which may be in- 
definitely postponed. Be she the veriest " fool " as 
to the chemistry of combustion, the housemaid " errs " 
not in the boiling of her tea-kettle. Be the husband- 
man ever so unversed in the philosophy of plant- 
growth, he is yet at no loss as to the plowing of his 
field or the sowing of his seed. He is not that other 
fool he would surely be, were he either to decline or 
delay his farm-work, unless he first have fully ex- 
plained to him the scientific secret of seed-sprouting, 
stalk-shooting and ear-filling. Prompt to do his stint, 
he trusts with no distraction of doubt that his silent 
and unseen Co- Worker will do His own full share 
of their joint undertaking; that He will see to it that 
soil and sun and shower and season do, each, its ap- 
pointed task. Caring less for causes than for results, 
so the outcome be sure, he will not stumble at the 
mystery of the cause. Accepting the established facts 
of farming experience, he goes cheerily through the 
whole round of summer toil, not puzzling himself 
about those hidden links which join his own work with 
the greater work of God. 

As is the domain of earth, so, also, is the Kingdom 
of Heaven. The husbandman knows well what his 
farm duties are. We know just as well what our Chris- 
tian duties are. We know what it is, first of all, to 
treat one another in a Christian way; to do to others 
and to all others as we would have them do to us ; what 

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it is to put envy away from us and to rejoice in the 
gifts, acquirements, and successes of others as we 
would have them rejoice in our own; what it is to lend 
a helping heart to those in sorrow and a helping hand 
to those in need. We know what it is to love, pray for 
and forgive our enemies. Equally well do we know 
that besides these duties toward our fellow-men, we 
are to seek for a nearer acquaintance with God by 
diligent study of His Word and by prayer. We know 
that we are to pray in our closets and that we are 
to use all social and public helps of Christ's appoint- 
ment. 

All these are just as plain duties of the Christian as 
were those in the parable of the husbandman. Are 
we practising these duties? We cannot but be grow- 
ing Christians if we are. And these duties any Chris- 
tian may do and be wholly ignorant of technical 
theology. No man who wishes to come to Christ 
need lose a moment's sleep because he cannot under- 
stand the new birth or reconcile fore-ordination with 
free-will. We may have the full and blessed benefit 
of prayer and know nothing of its philosophy. We 
may plant and water and gather precious fruit in the 
Lord's vineyard, yet know not how it is that God 
quickens the seed and gives the increase. Enough 
for us that He does bless our labor for Him and for 
souls; enough that He does bless to us the Word 
and prayer, and the sacraments and fellowship of 
His church. We may not see it from day to day, 
but if we are doing our part faithfully we may rest 

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in assured confidence that God is doing His ; and that 
we are, therefore, both growing to the stature of 
perfect men in Christ and gathering fruit unto Hfe 
eternal. 



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IV 



A RELIGION OF FACTS 

Christianity has for its key-phrase, " And it came 
to pass/' It is distinguished from false religions in 
that it is essentially a record of events. It is this 
advantage which it has of certified narration over un- 
certain speculation that gives it a reach which is in- 
finitely above all that to which even the most profound 
philosophy has ever attained. Who of all the " wise 
and prudent " thinkers of all the ages is more wise and 
prudent than is Plato? Yet Plato has no story to 
tell us. It is the Athenian cult. What "all the 
Athenians "want, what '' all the strangers '' who have 
caught from them the spirit of mental collision and 
combat want, is not finalities, but new and yet newer 
things about which there can be no end of discussion 
— a competitive field for logical and metaphysical 
gymnastics. So long as St. Paul has anything to offer 
about which they can dispute with him, it is all right. 
They will not only argue with him to the '^end of 
the chapter," but they will then be just as eager to 
begin a new chapter of disputation. The history of 
philosophy, indeed, has no last chapter, ending with 
maledictions against any man who shall either add 
to, or take from, the words that have been already 
spoken. 

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St. Paul does indeed have something new to say to 
these ever-inquisitive Athenians by way of argument, 
but what is vastly more to the purpose, he has news 
to tell them. He is not, from choice, a disputant. 
He is, chief of all, a reporter of up-to-date transac- 
tions. They listen not only patiently, but interestedly, 
to the new argument about " the unknown god " ; but 
no sooner does he go on to clinch his argument with 
the news of Christ's resurrection, than they call him 
down, and, with their hootings and cat-calls, compel 
him to stop. 

It is the historically established fact of the resur- 
rection that makes it so well worth while to know 
all else that can be known about the words and works 
of Jesus. But for His resurrection all else would be 
but little more than a matter of interesting but merely 
human biography. His having been both " raised up '' 
and '' taken up '' gives a life-and-death significance 
to His whole mission upon earth. 

Essentially, then. Christian preachers are always 
and everywhere to be evangelists — to preach as the 
Evangelists wrote — not inferences, experiences, sys- 
tems or dogmas, but — facts. It is the " Gospel — ^the 
Good News — according to Matthew " — not the cate- 
chism or the creed. " Ye are my witnesses,'' says 
Jesus; and the business of a witness is to tell not 
what he, the witness, feels or infers from the facts, 
but the facts. Tell the facts. Tell them over and over 
again. Keep on telling them. Then let the facts 
speak for themselves. Let them make their own 

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appeal to the minds, consciences and hearts of those 
who hear them. " It is the facts/^ says Paul to his 
Corinthian brethren, '' in which you stand. It is the 
facts by which you are saved. It is the facts that 
you are to hold fast — the facts which I delivered to 
you, first of all, and which you also received' — ^how 
that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and 
that He was raised again the third day; that, as an 
indisputable proof of this. He was seen of Cephas, 
then of the twelve ; after that, of five hundred brethren 
at once; that He was seen of James, then of all the 
apostles; and, last of all, of me also.'^ 

Some are, no doubt, at a loss to know just how 
to take St. Paul when he says that he rejoices and 
will continue to rejoice in even make-belief preachers 
of Christ; who have only a feigned interest in what 
they preach. What has now been said makes it easy 
of interpretation. If there be a fact which it is all- 
important for the world to know, let any one tell 
it who will. The Tories of the American Revolution 
did not much like the way the war had ended. Yet, 
if they pretended to like it, and started out to spread 
abroad the good news of the peace that had been made 
with the mother country, even the most loyal of pa- 
triots would have bid them Godspeed. " Tell it to all 
the inhabitants of the land.'' It is what they want; 
what they need ; what they are waiting to hear. 

" Go into all the world," is the great commission, 
'^ and tell to every creature in it the ' good news ' of 
Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 

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who, having been delivered for our offences, was 
raised again for our justification/' 

THE MULTITUDE OF THE SAVED 

It is both comforting and inspiring to note the 
different ways in which the earth's population and the 
population of heaven are increased. 

Here, one goes out of the world almost as fast 
as another comes into it. Had it been all entrance 
and no exit, the globe's population, like the corn which 
Joseph gathered in Egypt, had long since exceeded 
the limit of practical notation. As it is, decrease by 
death keeps almost even pace with increase by birth. 
The most healthful city outgrows but slowly the en- 
closures of its dead. Through war, famine, pesti- 
lence, earthquake, volcano, fire or flood, the ratios 
may be so sadly and suddenly reversed that, as in 
Martinique, it becomes easier to count the living than 
the dead. While it may have taxed an antediluvian 
statesman's power of computation to sum that old 
world's population, a child now needs but his " eight " 
fingers to tell how many souls were then '^ saved by 
water." To know at any nightfall the aggregate of 
the earth's inhabitants, we must take from that day's 
census of the newly come, the evening list of the newly 
gone. 

But, thanks be to the Love which we know has 
provided it, there is another world — another and a 
better. Were it not so, He who knows both worlds 

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would surely have told us. In that world whosoever 
comes, comes to stay — no departing and hence no 
parting; no cemetery census there to be subtracted 
from that fair city's ever-growing population; no 
name ever dropped from that heavenly directory, the 
Lamb's Book of Life ; the new heaven, new in that 
it is convulsed by no hurricane, cyclone, tempest or 
tornado; the new earth, new in that no life is ever 
lost by sickness, earthquake, volcano, fire or flood. 

Now and then an earthly monarch sees with alarm 
that the population of his empire has come to a stand- 
still. Never so with our Immanuel's Kingdom. It is 
ever and forever on the increase; a Kingdom of 
which there is no more an end of souls than of years. 
About this wonderful expansion St. John the Divine 
had in Patmos his once narrow notions wonderfully 
expanded. He " heard," but what he afterward 
'' saw " was infinitely more than what he had heard. 
What he heard was but " a number " ; the number of 
" all " that were " sealed of the tribes of the children 
of Israel." That exact calculation of the chosen, the 
covenant people of God, is as far as at one time even 
the *' beloved disciple " would have gone, had he like 
Jesus been asked, ''Are there few that be saved?" 
But after this numerical hearing the Revelator sees — 
and lo, '' a great multitude whom no man could 
number of all nations and kindreds and people and 
tongues standing before the throne and before the 
Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their 
hands and crying with a loud voice, ' Salvation to o\\r 

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God which sitteth upon the throne and unto the 
Lamb/ " 

ENJOYMENT FOLLOWING SURRENDER 

Our houses were within eye-shot of one another, 
and we were back and forth in them almost every 
day. They, of the other house, were a young married 
couple. The union being every way a most congenial 
one, they were the happiest of the happy in their new 
home — a bond all the more strong and tender because 
hallowed by a common love to the same Saviour. His 
position as a University professor being exactly 
suited to one of his fine literary tastes, combined with 
a fondness and aptitude for teaching, gave promise 
of a long, successful and happy career. 

The thwarting of these fondly cherished hopes 
came in a wholly unlooked-for time and way. Soon 
after the birth of their second child, the young mother 
was taken with a severe pulmonary illness — not 
alarming at first, but steadily persistent and increas- 
ingly violent. The symptoms at length pointed to 
slow and remediless consumption. Although grievously 
concerned for the final result, the husband would not 
for weeks allow himself to despair of her ultimate 
restoration to her former unimpaired health. But, 
despite all that the best medical skill and the most 
faithful nursing could do, the physician was forced, 
at length, to pronounce the case beyond hope of 
cure. 

Calling at my friend's house soon after this fateful 

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announcement, he met me at the door, took me by 
the hand, and led me into a room apart, and while 
we were kneeling in prayer, although it was with 
streaming tears and in an agony of grief, he then 
and there made a full surrender of that dearest treas- 
ure of his heart which he acknowledged as a now 
sovereignly recalled gift of his Heavenly Father's love. 

The surrender was complete. The battle against 
doubt and dread and despair was fought to so clear 
and decisive an issue as never, even for a moment 
afterward, to be renewed; victory over death was 
won, weeks in advance of its approach. The in- 
valid's trust has been serene and unshaken from* the 
first. Now they are one in confident assurance that 
all has been ordered in infinite wisdom and love. 
Their earthly companionship is indeed soon to be 
broken, but it will, ere long, be renewed in a brighter 
and happier sphere, never to suffer interruption again. 

The sick room, on which had rested the gloom of 
the husband's hitherto inconsolable grief, is now so 
brightened by his changed look and manner that 
friends are drawn to it by the cheerful greetings with 
which their visits are now met. The winter sunshine 
which floods the room typifies the confiding love which 
now brightens all hearts and faces. It is the joy of 
sweet and loving surrender. And it continues to the 
end. 

In an even more beautiful way the invalid mother 
evinced the reality and depth of the like joy-imparting 
surrender. The new-born child was sent miles away 

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LOFG. 



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in the country to a faithful nurse, who was in the habit 
of bringing the baby in, every few days, for the 
mother to see. A friend suggested to the mother 
that this was mistaken kindness on the part of the 
nurse, owing to the new pain which each of these 
partings must give her. " Oh, no," she said. " I 
had my final parting with the little fellow weeks ago. 
I gave him up to God as soon as I was assured that 
I was not going to get well. The pain of parting 
is over; let the nurse bring him' in as she has been 
doing." 

How well for us could we as God's children an- 
ticipate our appointed end by an immediate, full and 
loving surrender to Him of our whole earthly life 
and of all, even the most valued, of our earthly plans, 
ambitions, possessions and hopes. From the moment 
of such voluntary divesting ourselves of it, then, and 
then only, do we enter on our fullest enjoyment of the 
world. 

THE SILENT LIFE 

For one, I know of nothing on earth so sweetly 
hallowed, so exquisitely sacred, as the silent life of a 
little child; nothing which so directly and without 
the medium of any consciously intellectual process 
assures us of the being of God by bringing upon the 
spirit the hush of His over-shadowing presence. It 
was for those silent beatitudes which come only in 
answer to prayer that those far-seeing mothers who 

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brought their little ones to Jesus, came asking that 
He would " lay His hands on them and pray." 

The record is not that Jesus loved and prayed for 
little children as a class, but that He took them in 
His arms, one by one and that, one by one. He blessed 
them. He was careful to individualize even little 
children ; He said, *' This little child." By so doing 
and saying He but repeated what was done and said, 
when His own mother having brought Him to the 
temple to do for Him after the manner of the law, 
the devout Simeon took Him in his arms and said, 
" This child is set for the fall and rising again of 
many in Israel." 

Nor of little children only is it true, this person- 
alizing by prayer. This silent life, this deep, ineradi- 
cable consciousness of his affinity with the unseen 
Creator and the unending hereafter, is that which 
more than aught else individualizes each and every 
man both to himself and to God; which assures him 
that he is more than an inconsiderable fraction, more 
than an undistinguishable atom of some huge, ag- 
glutinated mass; that he is, instead, a distinct per- 
sonal unit; a separate, whole, responsible member 
of the family and Kingdom of God; as surely, as 
completely so, as though he were the only child of the 
family, the sole subject of that divine Kingdom. 

After the fight at Chattanooga those who were sent 
to bury the slain are said to have come upon a dead 
Union boy in a sitting posture — ^his back against a 
tree and in his lap a pocket-Bible lying open at the 

lOI 



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twenty-third Psalm. How, on the instant, does this 
one young man change for us the whole aspect of 
that battlefield! Before the battle we were thinking 
of the opposing armies only as two great wholes, as 
but two terribly destructive machines — the sole ques- 
tion at issue being which of the two were the more 
likely to out-match, out-fight, and out-destroy the 
other. But how completely is the whole struggling 
mass now resolved into distinct and rounded person- 
alities; how flashed upon us the conviction that amid 
all the roar, confusion and carnage of battle, each 
soldier stands just as clearly apart to the All-seeing 
Eye as in the stillness and solitariness of the closet 
of secret prayer. How blessedly real it makes for us 
the fact of a close, personal relationship to Christ, 
and the possibility that this relationship may be for 
each and every soul a union of intimate confidence; 
of sweet and indissoluble affection. How it raises 
us above the dreary monotony of all commonest 
things, lifting each soul to the sacredness of individual 
fellowship with the one all-merciful Father, the ever- 
loving Saviour, the all-comforting Spirit. Instead of 
the noun of multitude, '' mankind," so cheerless in 
its vagueness and generality, how it gives us, in its 
stead, the warm, loving personality, giving us to Christ 
by our names and giving Christ by all His appropriate 
names to us; inviting us whenever we will to turn 
away from all the neglects, injustices, envies and 
cruelties of the world, and with the upward glance 
of the loving child's confidence to say, " The Lord 

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is my shepherd; / shall not want. He leadeth me 
by the still waters. He restoreth my soul. Thy rod 
and thy staff they comfort meJ" 

The Bible is, in this respect, just such a book as 
we might expect it to be, if it be indeed a message 
from God to us His children. 

It was the sad lament of one of the greatest of 
heathen philosophers that " God does not care for 
individual men." But we see everywhere in the Bible 
that God does care for individual men. Over thirteen 
chapters of the book of Genesis are taken up with 
the account of His dealings with Abraham; with only 
touches here and there of contemporaneous history, 
and those given to illustrate more fully the life and 
character of the patriarch. Over eight chapters are 
employed for the career of Jacob, over twelve for that 
of Joseph — thirty-three out of the fifty of which the 
book is composed. Joseph is not brought in to set 
off the grandeur of Egypt, but Egypt is introduced 
to show the care which God takes of Joseph. One 
whole book, and that one of the longest, is given to 
prove the regard which God had for one man 
struggling to keep his faith under manifold and over- 
whelming afflictions. Little is told us in that book 
of the arts, manners or politics of that day, but who 
has not heard of the " patience of Job and seen the 
end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and 
of tender mercy " ! 

So, all through the New Testament, how many 
names are given with minute relation of time, place 

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and circumstance, of those whom Jesus instructed, 
comforted and healed. Everywhere we see Him as 
a tender friend and helper, adapting his ministrations 
of mercy to the special needs of each separate one: 
" He calleth his sheep by name." 

The world is yet to be saved from the depersonal- 
izing spirit of industrialism, commercialism and mili- 
tarism by the self-integrating power of the silent life. 

PRAYER ENDINGS 

" For Jesus' sake,'' " For Christ's sake," or, in am- 
plified form, " And all we ask and offer is for the 
sake of Christ alone," are quite common endings of 
even our Protestant pulpit prayers. 

Right, if rightly understood; yet open to the in- 
jurious construction of favoring that conception of 
God which makes Him to be but a sternly avenging 
Judge whose righteous wrath would at once fall on 
sinners but that the compassionate Jesus steps in 
between us and God, and Himself invites and receives 
the stroke of our deserved retribution. 

Such theory of the atonement would be paralleled 
by the case of a criminal who has been tried, convicted, 
and sentenced to a deserved death, but for whom 
intercession is made by the magistrate's favorite son. 
" Not that I have the least afifection for this justly 
condemned criminal," says the magistrate; ''he de- 
serves none ; but I do love you, my son, and for your 
sake, and for your sake alone, I grant the pardon you 
ask." 

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Or, as it really was with Powhattan, Pocahontas 
and Capt. John Smith. The angered chief had no 
love, not even pity, for his captured enemy, on whom 
he was about to let fall the death-dealing blow. But 
most dearly did he love his darling child, and it was 
for that love, and not for any love for himself, that 
the prisoner's life was spared. 

In complete and most comforting oppositon to this 
view the following Scripture citations show clearly 
that it is to the self-moved and self-abounding mercy 
of God that we owe the thought, purpose and method 
of our salvation. 

'' The Lord will not forsake his people for his great 
name's sake." i Sam. 12:22. 

" He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his 
name's sake." Ps. 23 :3. 

'' Therefore, for thy name's sake, lead me and guide 
me." Ps. 79:9. 

" For my name's sake will I defer mine anger." 

** For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will 
I do it." Isa. 48:9, II. 

'' O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, 
do thou it for thy name's sake." Jer. 14 17. 

New Testament teaching is in full accord with this 
teaching of the Old. '' But does not John point us 
to the baptized Jesus as the ' Lamb ' who takes away 
the sin of the world ? " Yes, but He is the " Lamb 
of God " — ^the sacrifice of God's own providing. 
" Was it not Jesus who bore the iniquities of us all ? " 
He did most willingly bear them, but it was because 

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they were '' laid on him " by God — ^borne in obedient 
submissiveness to God's will : '' I come to do thy 
will, O God." '' Is it not a faithful saying that Jesus 
came into the world to save sinners ? '' But it is a 
saying no less worthy of universal acceptation that 
God so loved the world that He gave and sent His 
Son on this great errand of atonement and recon- 
ciliation. 

Is a Mediator necessary through whom alone in 
the deep, unsearchable counsels of His wisdom God 
can bestow pardon and eternal life on the guilty and 
perishing? Yet, who but He provides the channel 
through whom these blessings may be conferred ? His 
" Beloved Son " through whom comes everlasting 
life, no less than the life itself, is the gift of God to 
the world, loved by Him to the full measure of so 
great a gift. It is the exceeding riches of His own 
grace and kindness that in all ages is shown towards 
us through Christ Jesus. Even the faith by which 
we receive that saving grace is His own gift. '' For 
His name's sake, your sins are forgiven," says that 
beloved disciple who declares that '' God is love." 
" Even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you " 
(Eph. 4:32), is a mistranslation for, "As God, in 
Christ," and thus it is given correctly in the Revised 
Version. " Keep through thine own name those whom 
thou hast given me," is part of our Lord's intercessory 
prayer. And " To God only wise be glory, through 
Jesus Christ forever," is St. Paul's final ascription 
of glory to Him to whom the glory is due. 

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I venture to suggest, therefore, as a more Scriptural 
way of ending our petitions : 

" And this we ask for thine own name's sake, 
through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

A LESSON IN CHRISTIAN WARFARE 

In order to win the happiest success in Christian 
work, there must be both unity of action and freedom 
of action. After the walls of Jericho had fallen " the 
people went up into the city every man straight be- 
fore him, and they took the city." They went up as 
one body. None stayed behind, none straggled, none 
shirked. Every man was in his place in the ranks — 
priest, officer and private; each in his own place. It 
was not by a select and privileged few that the victory 
was won. The army moved with one purpose, as 
though it were one man animated by one spirit. Yet 
along with this oneness of purpose and spirit, there 
was complete personal liberty. All went up together, 
but every man went up '' straight before him " ; every 
man in his own path. Every man had both foot-room 
and elbow-room. The man was not sunk in the mass. 
Each soldier fought after his own fashion, and on his 
own individual responsibility — no crowding, no inter- 
ference, no damaging criticism; no saying of one to 
another, " You must grind your spear exactly as I 
grind mine and wield it exactly as I wield my own." 

And shall one follower of Christ now say to an- 
other, " Come under my form of church-government ; 
fall in with my manner of worship and my mode of 

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administering the ordinances, or I cannot recognize 
you as a fellow-disciple of the Master"? As fitly 
might the English at Sevastopol have said to their 
French allies, " We would like your help in the taking 
of this fortress, but we cannot allow you to have any 
hand in the business ; at least, we cannot give you any 
recognized place in the lines of investment and battle, 
unless you will consent to exchange your French gray 
for our English scarlet ; unless you alter your Chasse- 
pot rifles into our Enfields; unless on your banners 
you emblazon our lion and unicorn over your aeur- 
de4is/^ 

Unhindered by overawing or needless restrictions, 
sacrificing cheerfully so much of what is peculiar to 
himself in opinion and practice as the best good of 
all may require, each hardness-enduring soldier of 
Christ will wish to go up and help fight his Lord's 
battles. But because he loves his brethren, also, be 
will wish for them what he desires for himself, that 
each of them be allowed to go up straight before him, 
do his own share of the work, and win and receive his 
own due share of the reward. 

SAVING HIMSELF AND HIS HEARERS 

" I do not see," I once said to one of the most de- 
voted and successful of our New England pastors, 
"how you can stand it to work as you do — ^hold so 
many meetings, do so much preaching and pastoral 
visiting and so much marrying and burying besides." 

io8 



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'* Oh," replied he, '' that is nothing ; a minister's 
hardest work is to take care of his own heart." 

As much as to say that only a good instrument 
can be instrumental of good. Would a man be a bless- 
ing ? he must first be blessed. Would he be the father 
of believers ? he must himself believe. David does not 
look for success in teaching transgressors God's ways 
so long as his own transgressions are not repented of 
and forgiven. It is by a true paternity of faith that 
Paul claims the Corinthians as his own children in 
Christ. The preacher of salvation must first save him- 
self. So Paul enjoins Timothy: "Take heed to thy- 
self ; by so doing thou shalt save thyself." But as he 
would save them that hear him, he must also give heed 
to his " doctrine." He must continually see to it that 
he preach to save. 

Only so much of his preaching as abides in renewed 
and sanctified souls will welcome the preacher in the 
great day of final award. Not, " Here am I and these 
sermons of mine, sound in logic, faultless in diction 
and graceful in rhetoric " ; but, " Here am I and the 
children whom Thou has given me." 

Then will be seen how wide and impassable is the 
gulf between the most elaborate discourses which yet 
fail to quicken into spiritual life, and new-bom souls 
given- to us by God to walk and talk with us in loving 
and grateful companionship through all the unending 
years. 



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EDDY AND STREAM 

Whenever and wherever are promoters or projec- 
tors, they must use such helpers as they can find, 
vi^hether the selected agents are well adapted to their 
purposes or not. 

Hence it is that merely human endeavors are so 
often blocked; sometimes by the dearth, incompetency 
or intractability of laborers; sometimes by the preju- 
dice, narrow-mindedness or down-right opposition of 
those whose concurrence is indispensable to the carry- 
ing on of the work; sometimes by natural obstacles 
almost insuperable; sometimes, as in the digging of 
the Suez and Panama Canals, by all three obstacles 
combined. Genius, combined with unconquerable de- 
termination, may indeed surmount these difficulties, 
yet, all the same, the difficulties do interfere with and 
delay, even although they may not ultimately defeat, 
the triumph of the projector. 

Whenever and wherever God wants a man for any 
place or work. He has but to make him. He en- 
dows and trains him, brings him on the stage of 
action at exactly the right moment; then guides and 
sustains him until his work is done. ^' He knew who 
the man was that should deliver His people from 
Babylon, and called him by name scores of years before 
he was born, saying of Cyrus, ' He is my shepherd 
and shall perform all my pleasure.' '' 

The purposes and plans of God proceed under His 
wise and wide survey with harmonious convergency 

no 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

to the desired end; even as the Amazon folds in his 
mighty embrace all his great eddies and sweeps on, 
unhindered by them, to the sea. 

BEYOND PERADVENTURE 

At a distance, we see rising from the threshing and 
winnowing floor only clouds of dust and chaff; we 
hear only the rumbling, rattling and clattering of 
wheels and shaken sieves. But, on closer inspection, 
we see streaming into the waiting bags the life-sup- 
porting grain. 

So it were but a narrow, starved and pinched 
conception which would lead us to find ever in the 
clamor of political controversy, in the darkening of 
the air by sectarian strife, in the mad rush and din 
of money-getting greed ; to find in any or all of these 
the slightest ground for discouragement to effort for 
the promised coming of the Kingdom of truth, right- 
eousness, liberty and peace in all the earth. 

In the vocabulary of that Kingdom the word 
" crisis " has, therefore, no place. Critical times there 
have, indeed, been in battles, sieges, revolutions, dynas- 
ties, governments; in the history of this and that 
movement for civic and political reform ; of individual 
churches, missions, revivals. The crisis once passed, 
there has come either progress or decline, establish- 
ment or extinction. But never has there been, never 
will there be, an uncertain point of danger in the 
carrying out of the t)ivine purpose for the world's 
redemption. 

Ill 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



REINTRODUCTIONS 

It is a common enough experience that an acquaint- 
ance to whom we were years ago first introduced 
seems to us, after a time, so changed in manner or 
appearance that reintroduction becomes necessary to 
recognition. ** He has grown so out of our knowl- 
edge '' is our way of explaining it. ' We chide ourselves 
for our obtuse imperception, realizing that the em- 
barrassment it has occasioned us might have been 
avoided had we been more discerning of our friend's 
real character, or had we followed more intelligently 
his developing purpose and career. 

John had introduced Jesus as " The Lamb of God 
that takes away the sin of the world." Jesus had 
Himself told His disciples beforehand of His death and 
resurrection as indispensable to the accomplishing of 
this His great work. A more careful weighing of 
this foretelling, and the two in their walk to Emmaus 
on that first Lord's Day afternoon would not have 
talked to one another in the doubtful, sad and fearful 
way they did; they would have been spared that re- 
proof from the unrecognized friend who had joined 
them, " Oh, fools and slow of heart to believe all the 
prophets have spoken," and they would not have 
needed the reintroduction he gave them of Himself 
as their risen Lord at the breaking of bread. His 
resurrection would then have been to them not a sur- 
prise, but an expected and joyous fulfilment. 

Their understanding having been thus once opened, 

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we look naturally to see the disciples guard themselves 
more carefully against any further discounting of the 
promises and predictions of Jesus. For a time they 
do. They continue with one accord in prayer and 
supplication for the promised Spirit. The manner of 
its outpouring was more startling by far than was the 
manner of the resurrection. The fact of the resur- 
rection was disclosed with the utmost quietness — 
disclosed gradually to but a few at a time. Pentecost 
came suddenly. It came with a rush — a sound from 
heaven as of a mighty wind. Cloven fiery tongues 
appeared. Once it would have affrighted them to hear 
such a sudden rushing sound, and to see such tongues 
of fire, even had they been playing on the ceiling or 
upon the walls of the chamber where they were sitting. 
These forked fires come straight down from above 
and, sitting, hold their place upon the head of each 
of them. Startling indeed! Yet are they not in the 
least startled. They do not count it strange, but be- 
gin at once to speak with other tongues as the Spirit 
gives them utterance. Jesus has no need to reintro- 
duce Himself to them as bountiful bestower of wisdom 
and power by the Holy Ghost. Recognizing Him as 
their gracious promiser steadfastly making good to the 
full the utmost that He has promised, they begin at 
once, with no fear of failure, to speak with other and 
unfamiliar tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance. 
Peter's intelligence is now broadened enough to 
understand the risen Christ as the real subject of 
prophecy in the sixteenth Psalm; yet he needs, and 

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later on must receive, a reintroduction to Jesus as 
Saviour of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. So 
tightly closed by Jewish bigotry had been both mind 
and mouth that both had to be pried open by special 
vision and command. Only then could Peter say, 
" Of a truth I perceive." 

Alas, that some of us should have needed, through 
our purblind '' slowness of heart to believe," so many 
reintroductions to God as our Father with all that 
tenderest fatherliness implies; to Jesus as our loving, 
heavy-laden cross-bearer for our sin-burdened souls, 
and to the Holy Ghost as our full and immediate Sanc- 
tifier (if only we will let Him be), as our Comforter 
under whatever sorrow, and as our ever-ready and 
faithful Guide '' into all truth." 

When, if ever, shall we take it to our very heart of 
hearts, not once only, but once for all and forever, that 
God is all that He so fully declares Himself to be, that 
He means all that He promises, and that all which 
He has promised for both ourselves and the world 
He will, even to the uttermost, assuredly fulfil. 

THE CROSS A SYMBOL OF OBEDIENCE 

In either the true son's or the true servant's '' What 
wilt thou have me to do," the stress-word is '' what," 
willingness to obey being taken for granted, whatever 
the command. 

By some commands, however, the spirit of obedience 
is more severely tested than it would be by others. 
While '* an angel would obey with equal alacrity, 

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whether bidden to sweep a street or rule a kingdom," 
he might properly enough prefer the latter, were it 
his to choose. 

The voluntary surrender, if for a time only, of 
rank, riches and honor, any sound mind will, " if it be 
possible,'^ avoid. Jesus would gladly have escaped 
making such surrender, if he could. Had it only been 
His Father's will, He would have had pass from Him 
not only the cup of Gethsemane and Calvary, but that 
also of the Bethlehem manger, of life-long poverty and 
dependence and of the servant's form. As that could 
not be, His whole life from first to last was one con- 
tinuous act of most perfect and willing obedience. 

While, therefore, to the question, '' For what did 
Jesus Christ come into the world," we have for the 
proximate and specific answer, " To save sinners," we 
also have given us, '' To do the will of God," as that 
ultimate and generic answer which the, as yet, unin- 
carnated Christ Himself prefaced with, ** Lo, I come." 

What the Father did was to deliver His Son up to 
the world that the world might do with Him as it 
would. There was no call or occasion for God to stir 
up the avarice of Judas, the scorn of the elders, the 
malice of the priests, the time-serving fear of Pilate, 
the fury of the mob, the zeal of the soldiers to the 
carrying out of a familiar decree of blood. He had 
not to depute angels to ply the scourge, plait the crown 
of thorns, put on the mock apparel, drive the nails or 
thrust the spear. Men were at hand ready enough, 
unbidden and untempted, to do it all — the natural out- 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

working of an enmity roused to rage by the fearless 
preaching of God's pure truth exemplified and con- 
firmed by the preacher's sinless life. 

To take one's cross, then, means the deliberately- 
formed determination to do one's whole duty at what 
hazard soever and at whatsoever cost — the extremest 
hazard possible being the hazard and loss of life 
itself. What the actual cost, no intending follower 
of Jesus can beforehand compute; whether a life of 
calm repose or whether it may be " given him on the 
behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him but also 
to suffer for His sake." Paul was shown, indeed, what 
great things he must suffer for the Master's sake, but 
it was only little by little as he went along. It was 
denied to Peter to know how John's career was to 
differ from his own. Alike in fidelity, yet how unlike 
in service and in suffering — Peter crucified; John 
dying peacefully in his bed at a good old age! We 
pledge ourselves " in blank " when we become follow- 
ers of Christ, leaving it entirely to Him to fill out 
the lines, but ready to honor whatever drafts, be they 
few or many, great or small, which He may make 
upon us for either service, sacrifice or suffering. 

In one respect the obedience of Jesus to the death 
of the cross was an obedience which He alone could 
render. For while on the merely human side He 
came to his death as did Abel, Stephen and Paul to 
theirs — martyrs alike from the exasperating goodness 
of an unalterable purpose to do the will of God — 
yet to Jesus came a suffering deeper by far than that 

ii6 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

caused by Cain's club, the witnesses' stones or Nero's 
sword — the agony and grief of a cross of expiation for 
the world's sin, the chief anguish of which lay in 
the hiding from Him of His Father's face. 

That anguish His faithful followers are spared. To 
Stephen was vouchsafed the vision denied to the cruci- 
fied Christ. While the stones were raining on the 
martyr's head, lo, the heavens were opened and he saw 
Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That which 
was actual to Stephen the like steadfast faith will 
make virtual to any and every obedient child of God 
during however sorrowful a life, in however painful 
a death. 

OPPORTUNITY THE TEST OF CHARACTER 

The desire to know beforehand the character and 
qualifications of those with whom' we contemplate 
having either social or business intercourse finds ex- 
pression in the confident boast of practical phrenology. 
By practitioners in this so-called science, intelligence 
offices are opened in which the skilful manipulator 
of heads offers himself as an infallible guide to the 
safe selection of both intimate companions and asso- 
ciates in business. The attempt is thus made to put 
prophecy in the place of probation, and, by so doing, 
to revolutionize the world-old method for the deter- 
mination of character, endowment and adaptation. 
However sincere the attempt, it is both futile and mis- 
leading. For the clear ascertaining of such mental and 
moral values, the actual conduct of life is the only 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

accurately weighing instrument. Opportunity is the 
one true test; the seeing how any man does what 
it is given him to do. In every home, office, shop, 
store, school of learning, hall of legislation, are poised 
invisible scales by which are silently weighed husband 
and wife, father and mother, child, brother and sister, 
merchant and clerk, capitalist and laborer, teacher and 
pupil, law-maker, judge and executive official. By 
irrtprovement, nuisimprovement or non-improvem.ent 
of afforded opportunity is each probationer both tried 
and made. Antecedent demonstration is altogether 
out of the question. Until thus tested the probationer 
does not himself know just what manner of man he 
is. Whether it be in the home or in business, the 
men and the women who, year after year, make a 
failure of life are as much an astonishment to them- 
selves as they are to their acquaintances and friends. 
In this present life of ours in this way tested may 
be seen as in a mirror the life that is to come. The 
fleeting fashion of this world becomes the fixed fashion 
of the next. In this present scene of things is enclosed 
the germ of that spiritual kingdom whose issues tak^ 
hold on eternity — those principles of moral order 
which must determine each man's place in the coming 
world. Our proneness to dangerous familiarity with 
the opportunities and momentous possibilities of the 
everyday life we are now living, gives startling sig- 
nificance to the Master's words, " Notwithstanding, be 
ye sure of this that the kingdom of heaven is come 
nigh unto you." In the different courses and charac- 

ii8 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

ters here taken and formed one sees the finger of God 
pointing silently to the awards of eternity. We mis- 
take if we think of the '' day of judgment '* as the 
weighing day. That day is simply the day for de- 
claring the result of this earthly trial and assigning 
to each man that " place " which he has already made 
" his own '' ; his final answer to the question asked 
day by day of his earthly life now ended, " Will this 
man glorify the God in whose hand his breath is and 
whose are all his ways ? " 

THE WEIGHING OF A KING 

Risen at length by inheritance to the throne of a 
great empire, a monarch has presented to him the pos- 
sibility, through right ruling, of such usefulness and 
renown as even Gabriel might envy. Will he see this 
path of honorable fame, and, so seeing, will he follow 
it? Will he stand at attention before the Muse of His- 
tory as, pointing to an as yet unsullied page, she bids 
him fill it with a record of noble deeds ? Will he heed 
those purer promptings of his nature which counsel 
him to live not selfishly for his own, but, self-sacri- 
ficingly, for his people's good? Not for a few years 
of ignoble pleasure, but for an age-long term of worth- 
iest recompense ? Will he be instructed by the example 
of his discrowned father who for his self-idolizing 
pride was smitten with lunacy, stripped of his royal 
robes, driven from the sons of men, his heart grown 
to be like the heart of a beast, his dwelling with the 
wild asses, fed with grass like oxen, and his body wet 

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with the dews of heaven, until he should understand 
that the Most High God ruleth in the kingdom of men 
and that He appointeth over it whomsoever He will? 
Will he be a true minister of God, a terror always 
to evil works but never to the good? Will he devise 
only equal and just laws and be firm and impartial in 
their execution? 

Here is one path bright and glorious ; sure to shine 
more brightly and gloriously to the very end of how- 
ever prolonged a reign. 

Sadly enough, however, there is this other and 
wholly unlike path. His throne may be the seat of 
pride and obstinate self-will. Conceiving himself to 
be raised above that strict accountability to which 
men of lower place and blood are held, he may drink 
in the flattery which is sure to whisper that the throned 
heir of so vast an empire need, in shaping his course, 
neither to fear God or to regard man. Taking no 
counsel but of his own passions and caprices, he may 
become insolently despotic and cruelly vindictive ; may 
abuse his power of patronage to gratify personal favor- 
itisms and revenges, calling around him only such 
self-seeking advisers as shall keep him undisturbed, 
both by the wrongs, miseries and protests of his people, 
and by the hidden dangers which menace the stability 
of his throne. 

Which path will this monarch choose? The two 
choices are the balances in which he is to be weighed 
and by which is to be found and declared what manner 
of man he is in his inmost heart. During the seventeen 

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years of his reign the long-suffering Arbiter holds 
patiently aloft the trembling scales. Now strikes the 
hour when the Weigher lowers the beam. The weigh- 
ing is ended, the unimproved opportunity is irrecover- 
ably gone. This last banquet of idolatrous mirth fills 
at once the measure of God's forbearance and of the 
monarch's guilt. No sooner is the Hand which has 
so long held the balance disengaged from that secret 
task, than it comes forth and writes over against the 
candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the King's 
palace : 

''Weighed and Found Wanting/' 

After the weighing, the finding. After the finding, 
the marking. After the marking, the irreversible 
doom : '* In that night was Belshazzar slain, and Da- 
rius, the Median, took the kingdom." 

PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 

Taking all the goodness out of the " good news " 
of salvation by grace alone is the heresy against which 
Paul warns his Galatian brethren and to which he 
charges Peter with having once lent the sanction of 
his apostolic example. 

" You know," writes he, in effect, " how I once 
fairly hated the word ' Christian ' ; how mad, how 
exceedingly mad, it made me to hear it spoken; how 
fiercely I fought it; how I persecuted and wasted the 
church of God. But when it pleased God, out of 
mercy to my ignorant unbelief, to show me the awful 

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mistake I was making by revealing His Son to me 
and in me, I began forthwith to be as zealous for 
Christ as I had before been against him. Not only 
did I not ask authority or permission of those who 
were apostles before me; I kept wholly aloof from 
them; acting as I did under orders received directly 
from Christ himself. It was three years before I 
even went up to Jerusalem, and when I did go, the 
only apostles I saw there were Peter and James, the 
Lord's brother. With the work they were doing in 
the home field I did not interfere; did not even show 
myself to the churches of Judea. All they knew 
about me was that I was now earnestly engaged in 
preaching the faith which once I destroyed. 

" It was full fourteen years before I visited Jeru- 
salem again. Then I told them the kind of free gospel 
I was preaching to the Gentiles. I told it to only 
the leading men there, and to them in the quietest 
way possible, as I did not wish to have my work hin- 
dered by unnecessarily antagonizing their Jewish 
prejudices. By this prudence I so carried my point 
that although Titus, who was with me, was a Greek, 
they did not compel him to be circumcised. The re- 
sult was that the false brethren who come in on the 
sly to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ, 
and to bring us into bondage, could make no headway 
against us. 

" It was some time after this that I had my first 
and only quarrel with Peter. He had come down to 
Antioch where I then was. At first, he did as I did ; 

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kept company with some who were not Jews and even 
ate with them at the same table. He knew, as well 
as I did, that there was nothing wrong about that. 
In a way, he knew it better than I did. He had been 
favored with the special vision of the great sheet 
knit at the four corners and let down to the earth, 
and word from God to tell him what it meant — ^the 
vision and word which made him so prompt for the 
day's journey to Cesarea to tell the inquiring Cen- 
turion what he ought to do. 'You know,' he said, 
' that it is an unlawful thing for a Jew to keep com- 
pany or come to one of another nation, but God has 
showed me that I should not call any man common or 
unclean.' In spite of that, there were some so in- 
tensely Jewish as to have censured Peter for doing 
at Antioch what he had done freely at Cesarea. 
Lingers still in the apostle some of the old timidity 
which led him thrice to deny his Lord in the judgment 
hall of Pilate. So afraid is he to have those whom 
James had sent down to Antioch see on what easy and 
familiar terms he is living with outcast Gentiles, that 
he withdraws and separates himself from them. 
When I saw this, and saw, too, how other Jews, and 
even Barnabas, were carried away with this dis- 
simulation, I could not let such a cowardly com- 
promising of the truth go, and I keep still. Loyalty 
to Christ and His gospel compelled me to speak out, 
and I rebuked Peter sharply and openly. I said to 
him before them all, ' If you, a Jew, live as do the 
Gentiles, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as 

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do the Jews ? Jews, as you and I are, we are now 
enlightened enough to know that a man is not justified 
by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus 
Christ. For my part, I am ready to say always, and 
everywhere, that this grace, this gift of God, through 
His Son, is my sole reliance for pardon and salvation. 
I do not frustrate this grace ; do not set it aside, and 
so dishonor it by putting a particle of trust in any- 
thing else whatsoever/ '' 

NOT A HOOF BEHIND 

After the plague of flies, Pharaoh proposed a com- 
promise. The Hebrews might go and sacrifice to their 
God, provided they would not in so doing leave the 
king's country. 

" No," came the prompt answer, " we must be al- 
lowed to go as far and in whatever direction we 
choose — out into the wilderness, a good three days' 
journey at least." 

" In that case," the king said stiffly, " you shall not 
go at all." 

After the plague of the hail, however, he yielded 
enough to say, " Well, then, name your terms. How 
many of you are going? " 

" Young and old, sons and daughters, flocks and 
herds ; we are all going," was Moses' frank and bold 
reply. 

" That will I never consent to. I will do this, 
though : I will meet you half-way. I will grant what I 
understood was all you asked for at the first. You 

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men may go, but the women and children must stay. 
That is my last word/' 

Locusts and three days of pitchy darkness; then 
from the king a " hurry " call for the two commis- 
sioners ; '' I will meet you more than half-way. Go, 
little ones and all ; you need leave only your flocks and 
herds." 

" No compromise," demands the man of God. " No 
meeting half-way ; you must come all the way to meet 
us. ' Unconditional surrender ' is the word. Our 
cattle must go too — every one of them. Not a hoof 
shall be left behind. It is all or nothing." 

" All or nothing " is the demand and rightful claim 
of Jesus. No half surrenders, no nine-tenths, no 
ninety - nine - hundredths compromises. Those who 
came to him hoping for easier terms without exception 
failed to find them. He at once discouraged the 
would-be follower who wanted first to be assured that 
his following would not in the end leave him worse 
off than the fox without a hole or the bird without a 
nest. To another and yet another on the same occa- 
sion the Master said, " If you propose following me, 
it must be without any ^ if s ' or ^ buts ' ; even though 
one ' but ' be, ' Let me first go and bury my father ' ; 
and another, ' Let me go first and bid farewell to 
them that are at home at my house.' " The furrow 
once started, no withdrawing the hand from the plow 
until the furrow is finished. 

That husband or father who reverses the terms of 
Pharaoh's proposed compromise and says, " Yes, my 

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wife and my children may join the Lord's pilgrim 
band and welcome/' while himself hanging back, will 
find that no such family concession is accepted by 
the Master in lieu of his own personal following. It 
was finding that he could not consecrate himself to 
Jesus unless he at the same time consecrated his 
" great possessions " that caused the rich young man 
to go away sorrowful. 

No, " not a hoof behind." Along with that which 
is most precious — our purest and deepest affections — 
we must also bring as a willing sacrifice to Jesus that 
which is least and lowest ; all that pertains to even our 
mere animal nature — so to eat and drink that with the 
temple of our bodies we may best glorify God. 

" A prophet like unto me." In nothing was Jesus 
more like Moses than in thus demanding that our 
whole manhood ; that families, that nations, that all 
our business and all our gains should accept without 
reserve his provided and offered deliverance from the 
bondage of the world's sin, to be brought into the 
glorious liberty of the children of God. 

FROM ABEL TO ZACHARIAS 

No allowed disadvantage of having ill-dispositioned 
and ill-behaving parents compels or justifies like bad 
disposition and behavior in the child. What the child 
should do, when old enough to think, know, decide 
and act for himself, is to disown the parental wrong- 
doing and himself lead a right and true life. If, on 
the contrary, he of free choice acquiesce in and con- 

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tinue the wrong-doing, then to that personal demerit 
he adds that of this evil descent. Voluntary adoption 
is a stronger judicial bond than is involuntary in- 
heritance. The longer the ancestral chain of approved 
and continued transgression, the more firmly it binds. 
The son who deliberately walks in parental and pre- 
parental unlawful ways assumes liability for their 
accumulated penalty. This gives point to that terri- 
ble denunciation of Jesus against the oppressors and 
persecutors of His day, that the blood of all the 
prophets from the foundation of the world, " from the 
blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias/' should 
be required of that generation. 

" Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children " means simply this : that when the children 
decide to make a family matter of iniquity, God can 
do no otherwise than decree to make a family matter 
of the punishment. 

No descendant of Adam, then, will be punished 
for Adam's disobedience unless he show his approval 
of that disobedience by a like disobedient life. Our 
being, *' children of wrath by nature " is reckoned 
against us only as we ourselves '' walk according to 
the course of this world/' fulfilling by our own volun- 
tary choice the desires of the flesh and of the dis- 
obedient mind. 

How kind the invitation, how reasonable the re- 
quirement, how indispensable the condition : '^ Where- 
fore come out from among them and be ye separate, 
saith the Lord; and I will receive you, and will be 

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a Father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daugh- 
ters, saith the Lord Almighty." 

SELF-HARMING HASTE. 

Paul and Silas were fortunately a little too quick 
for their despairing prison-keeper. A second or two 
more and he would have made out of his own heart 
a new and bloody sheath for his drawn sword. Seeing 
the prison-doors open and supposing, naturally enough, 
that his prisoners had escaped, he knew that in the 
eye of the law he was already as good as dead. Paul 
and Silas knew it, too. They would recall the old 
Hebrew usage illustrated by the soldier who said, on 
delivering a prisoner whom he had taken in battle 
to a fellow-soldier : " Keep this man ; if by any means 
he be missing, then thy life shall be for the life of 
him"; as also by what Jehu said to the eighty men 
appointed to keep guard over the worshippers of Baal : 
** If any of the men whom I have brought into your 
hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be 
for the life of him." 

As for the Roman law, the Philippian jailer had 
every reason to expect the like fate with that of 
the sixteen soldiers whom Herod a few years before 
had ordered put to death for allowing their prisoner, 
Peter, to escape. His own case, indeed, seemed the 
more hopeless of the two^ — punishment of Paul and 
Silas having been demanded by the popular fury 
aroused against them by the owners of the damsel 

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out of whom, the day before, Paul had cast an evil 
spirit of divination; so fierce the mob that the mag- 
istrates, waiving the customary formalities of trial, 
had ordered them, having first been scourged, to be 
guarded with the utmost vigilance in prison. What- 
ever milder views the jailer may himself have taken 
of the alleged oflfence, his stern sense of official duty 
left him no choice. It was, we may reasonably con- 
clude, out of no " gratuitous inhumanity,'' but in 
simple obedience to his instructions, that he thrust the 
two men into the inner prison and made their feet 
fast in stocks. 

The earthquake throb of Qirist's rewarding love 
which brought joy to his two steadfast servants filled 
the jailer with despair. There was everything to 
heighten his dismay — the seismic shock, the bewilder- 
ment which attends being wakened from the first 
sound sleep of the night; the darkness, and, worst 
of all, his seeing by the light he had called for that 
the prison-doors were open, compelling instant belief 
that the prisoners whom he had been so strictly 
charged to keep had fled. Fully aware that no ex- 
planation or apology would avail him, in aflfright and 
despair he foresaw awaiting him only certain and 
speedy death. With the stern stoicism* of a true 
Roman, he at once unsheathed his sword, resolved 
to avert from himself and from his friends the dis- 
grace, at least, of a public execution. 

For such self-destruction the jailer's way was, ethi- 
cally speaking, easy and open. His conscience was 

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not of a kind to make him afraid. Being but a Gentile, 
he had none of those sixth-commandment scruples 
which would have restrained a Jew. As for Roman 
sentiment, there had been no occasion to fortify him- 
self beforehand by defiant membership in some city 
" suicide club." That sentiment, as voiced by earlier 
and later philosophers, was on his side. '' The ancient 
sage," said Qirysippus, " had the consciousness of 
an invincible mind within, which placed him above 
the power of fate. He was conscious of an entire 
equality in moral elevation with Jupiter himself. He 
was master of his own life and might take it when- 
ever he found that he could no longer live in a man- 
ner worthy of himself. On this principle many noble 
Romans acted, not only when they wished to escape 
from the ignominy of despotism, but also when dis- 
ease cramped their powers and rendered life insupn 
portable." The case is cited of a man of threescore 
and seven lying under an incurable disease whp, 
when his physician wished him to take nourishment, 
dismissed the doctor with the word, *' My mind is 
made up ; " upon which Pliny remarks, " I admire 
the spirit of the old man and wish I possessed it." 

It was the teaching of Pliny that ^^Among the great 
evils of our earthly existence the greatest good which 
God has bestowed on man is the power of taking 
his own life," and it was in this prevailing temper of 
sadness mixed with cold resignation that he encoun- 
tered and fell a victim to the flames of Vesuvius. 

Seneca maintained that ''The eternal law has made 

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nothing better for us than this, that it has given us 
only one way of entering into Hfe, but many ways 
of going out of it. . . . If thy mind then be 
melancholy and in misery, thou mayest put a period 
to this wretchedness. Wherever thou lookest, there 
is an end to it. Seest thou that precipice? There 
thou mayest have liberty. Seest thou that lake, that 
river, that well? Liberty is at the bottom of them. 
Seest thou that little tree? Freedom hangs upon it. 
Thy own neck, yea, every vein in thy body may be 
a refuge to thee from such servitude." 

A few years only had elapsed since this stoical phi- 
losophy had been exemplified by the death of two 
of Rome's noblest sons on that very spot. After the 
victory of the imperial army under Anthony and 
Octavius in the battle at Philippi, Brutus and Cassius, 
who had staked the Republic on that single engage- 
ment, both perished by throwing themselves on their 
swords, escaping thus an ignominy they could neither 
avert nor bear by " flying with their hands when no 
longer able to fly with their feet." To these examples 
of desperate determination this Philippian jailer is 
about to add another, but that instantly the tables 
are turned. The warden is now become the ward. 
The two men whom: he has been keeping from mob 
violence are now to keep him from self-violence and 
self-destruction. Seeing his forlorn and desperate 
purpose, Paul cries out with a loud voice and just in 
time to prevent the fatal stroke, " Do thyself no harm^ 
for we are all here." 

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THROUGH THE SIEVE 

Another marvel in this scene of wonders— prisoners 
dechning to be rescued and, in place of kilHng the 
guard, preventing the guard from kilHng himself. 
Bent a moment ago on destroying himself, the jailer 
is now all anxiety to know how he shall save himself ; 
not for this world, but for that other world into which, 
all unprepared, he was about to plunge. " Sirs, what 
shall I do to be saved ? " is the question which he 
instinctively feels that these two wonderful men can 
answer. 

When morning came, on what a scene did it dawn ! 
Not on a suicide's ghastly death- wound; not on a 
widowed mother and fatherless children ; not on souls 
shrouded still in heathen doubt and hopelessness; 
but upon a household of truth-enlightened, believing, 
baptized, saved and rejoicing disciples of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

To be on our guard against either hasty utterance 
or act in time of sudden distress or danger; to re- 
member that, bad as things are, they may not be 
nearly as bad as they seem; to bear in mind that 
the "unknown being always the region of terror," 
discouragements look more discouraging when seen 
through discouraged eyes; that things may be just 
ready to brighten when they look the darkest; never 
to forget the wrong of resorting to any rash, des- 
perate, dishonest, doubtful or self-harming expedient 
for obtaining relief ; to know that " God will not have 
us break into His council-house or spy out His hidden 
mysteries," but that we must wait His time with watch- 

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ing and prayer — such, are the lessons embodied for 
us in the PhiHppian story. 

To a man bereft at a stroke of property, children, 
and health, a foolish woman once said, tauntingly, 
'' What of your God now ? Curse him, and then die 
and be done with it." The man did better. He gave 
to the world, instead, a world-old and much-needed 
lesson on the happiness of enduring. By reason of 
it all the generations since have heard of and seen 
two things which it would have been an unspeakable 
loss to have missed — '' The patience of Job and the 
end of the Lord." 

What the Lord's beginnings may be with us in this 
world matters comparatively little since, as both Job 
and the jailer found. His '' end " shows Him to be 
'* very pitiful and of tender mercy." 

OUR ONE CONCERN 

These seven disciples are now at a standstill, know- 
ing not whither to go or what to do. For the three 
years past all has been plain. They have been doing 
their work under the immediate direction and super- 
vision of the Master. But, although He has twice 
appeared to them since His resurrection. He has given 
them no instructions as to future service. Has their 
apostolic commission, then, expired? If so, will it 
be renewed, and when? The over-strenuous Peter 
is impatient of delay. He will do what he can. He 
will go back to his useful though humble pre-apos- 
tolic work. Until there are again more men to catch, 

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he will again catch fish. He does not say tentatively, 
'* Suppose we go a-fishing, then ? " "I am going," 
he says, in his bold, independent fashion. The six 
falling in, they all start together for the lake, pull 
out from shore, drop anchor and cast the net. Mak- 
ing no catch, they row, anchor and cast again. They try 
their luck in this place and that, but without success. 
Undisciplined landsmen would have given up in dis- 
gust; would have tumbled the limp net into the boat, 
pulled straight to shore and scattered to their homes 
long before midnight. Not so with these seven ex- 
perienced fishermen. Too well they know the fickle- 
ness of their craft to think of farming the sea as the 
farmer farms his fields. With the fisherman's pro- 
verbial patience they toil through the entire night till 
the stars fade and the east reddens with the dawn. 

Now, looking shoreward, they see a stranger stand- 
ing there near the water's edge. He calls aloud to ask 
whether they have anything on board for a breakfast. 
'' No, we have toiled all night, but have taken noth- 
ing." '' Cast on the right side of the boat and you 
shall find." No sooner does the net now settle and 
spread than they find it dropped into a school of fishes 
— so full, directly, that they cannot pull it in — not to 
be drawn but dragged. 

John has his hands on the ropes of the net with 
the hands of the rest; but no sooner does he feel the 
weight and motion of the darting and struggling prey 
than a new thought strikes him. Casting a searching 
glance at the stranger on the beach, in a quick, eager 

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undertone he says to Peter, " It is the Lord ! " John 
is the first to see, but Peter is the first to act. '* What ! 
the Lord, my Lord, my kind, forbearing, forgiving 
Master! This is now the third time He has come 
to see me since His resurrection, and not a word, 
not a look or sHghtest hint has He given me about 
my sleeping in that sorrowful garden, or about my 
following Him afar off when His enemies were lead- 
ing Him away, or about my again and again denying 
that He was any friend or even acquaintance of mine/' 
No sooner does he catch John's words, " It is the 
Lord," than he lets go the net, snatches up his coat 
from the bottom of the boat, throws it on, leaps into 
the sea, now swimming and now wading to shore, 
leaving the six to bring in the loaded net as best they 
can, while he hastens to look once more into those 
dear eyes whose glance of mingled pity, reproof and 
love in the judgment hall there broke his unsteadfast 
heart and sent him out alone in the darkness, weeping 
bitterly. 

If Peter has a lurking dread lest that sorrowful and 
reproachful look may now be repeated, he is not long 
in discovering that such fear is groundless — equally so 
if he has feared lest, although Jesus may forgive. He 
will never again take back as a trusted friend one who 
had proved faithless in the hour of such extreme trial. 

We, alas, who are ourselves so very imperfect, count 
it magnanimity if we go so far only as to say of one 
who has once shown himself inconstant, " Yes, I for- 
give him, but I can never again trust him." Poor, 

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pitiable magnanimity! Not so Jesus to his once weak 
and erring disciple. He not only freely forgives him, 
He gives him again his freest and fullest confidence. 
He trusts and honors him just as completely as though 
Peter had never deserted and denied Him. Jesus does 
indeed in the most delicate way awaken Peter's grief 
by thrice asking, " Lovest thou me ? " but when comes 
the appealing answer, '' Lord, thou knowest that I 
love thee,'' the appeal is at once followed by the thrice- 
given renewal of his apostolic commission, " Feed my 
sheep " — at the same time foretelling for him a life 
of faithful service to be crowned at its close with the 
glory of martyrdom. 

We cannot doubt that Peter was given this pre- 
diction as a needed check to his naturally too impetu- 
ous and self-confident disposition. The chastened 
spirit with which he now follows the Master is in 
striking contrast with his once forward boast, 
" Though all should forsake and deny thee, yet will 
not I." Methinks he is now saying to himself, " Yes, 
my Lord is taking me at my old word. I said that 
I would die for him and to that test it seems I am one 
day to be brought." And feeling now his weakness 
more deeply than ever before, we are sure of the 
unalterable longing with which his heart goes out for 
that steadfast strength which shall keep him hence- 
forth unswervingly true and loyal to the end. 

We see, too, how entirely natural it is that on 
turning round and seeing John, he should ask, " Lord, 
and what shall this man do? Thou hast appointed 

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for me the life by which I am to prove my love for 
thee and the death by which I am to glorify God. What 
is his work and his end to be? Shall we who have 
alike enjoyed privileged companionship with thee, 
who were together on the Mount of Transfiguration 
and at the Resurrection-tomb, share also the martyr's 
doom, or must I alone be carried whither I would 
not?" 

This concern of Peter about the future of John 
our Lord sharply reproves : " If I will that he tarry 
till I come, what is that to thee ? Follow thou me." 

Stumble over it as we may, the fact remains that 
God does make marked diiferences in both the lives 
and deaths of even his equally loved children. Of 
the eleven apostles John alone was spared martyrdom. 
Persecuted, banished, often in jeopardy of his life, he 
yet died in his bed in a good old age. He tarried, 
according to the foretelling, until Christ's coming to 
destroy Jerusalem — it having pleased God to set him 
apart from the rest for the honored task of completing 
the canon of his revealed and written Word. 

An unaccountable, if not unfair, discrimination 
seems, at first view, to be made here against Peter. His 
own later warning, indeed, implies how entirely natural 
it is for us to wonder at the " fiery trial " which even 
the best beloved of our brethren are sometimes ap- 
pointed to endure. Of a certain friend, for example, 
I am tempted to say, " He is, so far as I can see, no 
more of a Christian than am I. Why, then, should 
God give to him so much better a time, so much 

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more honored a position, than he gives to me ? '* Who 
can tell ? Health and sickness, weakness and strength, 
toil and ease, poverty and wealth, lowliness and lofti- 
ness of rank, ten talents and two — these widely dif- 
ferent gifts and experiences God does either ordain or 
permit. To some He gives all the abounding com- 
forts of this life *' and heaven besides/' What con- 
cern of mine if He does ? My course is plain. I have 
but to follow Christ — sure, if I do, that however hard 
and rough the way, it will lead to the same bright and 
happy heaven at last — ^brighter and happier, it may 
be, since the heavier the cross, if patiently borne, the 
richer the crown. 

Give our blind, rebellious impatience its way and 
it would make a quick average of these so unequally 
distributed gifts, attainments, prosperities and ad- 
versities. Thus of one who has been long and sig- 
nally prospered we are tempted to say : " Never mind ; 
his turn will come one of these days ! " Perhaps not. 
His " turn," in that sense, may never come at all. It 
may please the Master to give him a smooth and pleas- 
ant path to the very end. *' What is that " to me ? 
Is there, then, such a superabundance of happiness in 
the world that I should enviously wish that there were 
less ? 

Two ambitious sons of an ambitious mother once 
asked Jesus for what they mistakenly imagined were 
the two highest honors in his gift. The answering 
rebuke and questioning test are as fitting now as 
they were then : " How poor and unworthy is your 

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estimate of me and of my kingdom ! Enough, if you 
can partake with me of this my cup and of this my 
baptism, which speak not of any earthly glory but 
only of loving service and sacrifice for the relieving 
of the suffering, the comforting of the sorrowing, and 
the saving of the lost." 

A QUICK TURN FROM SORROW TO JOY 

On their way to the sepulchre the two Marys are 
walking together in the same dark shadow that from 
the beginoiing has shrouded the hearts of mourners 
visiting the last resting-places of their dead. They 
go, looking to find all at the tomb as they saw it left 
by Joseph and Nicodemus on the preceding Friday 
afternoon. It is as quiet as it was then, but in all else 
how changed! The stone lying at a distance away 
and, where it had stood, a black open doorway instead. 
The accustomed signs of death are gone. Can it be 
that they had missed the way; that they have come 
to the wrong spot, as is not unfrequently the case 
amid the intricate windings of a modern city cemetery ? 
No, they cannot have mistaken either the path or the 
place. The path from Jerusalem is both short and 
plain. The sepulchre is by itself, in a private garden. 
The place and its surroundings are recognized as 
soon as seen; the same stone-hewn vault, the same 
rocky shelf on which they saw tenderly laid the lifeless 
body of their Lord. Here lay His head, and there 
His feet. But there where lay His feet are now only 

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the linen bandages in which the body was wound, and 
here wrapped together in a place by itself is the napkin 
that was about His head. Even the silence is changed ; 
more profound and painful than it would be were 
the body still here. 

At this so strangely altered appearance the two 
friends are most deeply and painfully perplexed' — the 
perplexity soon turns to affright as close beside them 
is suddenly seen standing, with lightning-like coun- 
tenance and snow-white apparel, an angel of the Lord. 
Falling upon their knees they lean forward, bowing 
their faces in terror to the ground. 

From this terrified suspense they are quickly re- 
lieved, however, by the loving tones of the angel's 
voice which is as fear-dispelling as his words : " You 
seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He 
is risen. Come see the place where the Lord lay." 

But why this " Come " ? Had they not already and 
but just now seen the " place '' and noticed carefully 
how everything about it appeared? Yet well does 
the angel say, '' Come " ; so differently will the self- 
same burial-place look to them, now that they have 
a messenger from the Father to stand beside them and 
talk to them of the resurrection. When at the angel's 
word they do rise and look again, behold, the tomb 
is no longer the dread place to them that it was before. 
In that chill gloom which had made of the two nights 
and of the intervening day one long night of death, 
their Lord had indeed lain. Why is He not here now ? 
Is it because either Pilate's band, the faithless gar- 

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dener, or the faithful disciples had first disrobed and 
then stolen him away? And is it the angel's comfort 
that he will at once go and dispute with Pilate about 
the body so that, recovered and restored to its former 
resting-place, these doubly-sorrowing friends may yet 
re-embalm Him with their own waiting spices and with 
this same fine linen which Joseph bought and which 
the grave-robbers were considerate enough to leave 
behind ? 

Far sweeter solace than that! The assurance that 
never again will Jesus need either grave-clothes or 
spices or even a tomb; that having entered once for 
all that dismal waste and unbound all its dread fetters, 
never shall the place where he lay wear again the 
gloomy aspect of death; that the dark door of the 
sepulchre out of which he returns conqueror is to be 
evermore the gateway, instead, of never-ending life. 

To complete their joy the angel makes the women 
sharers with himself in this ministry of consolation : 
'* Go quickly and tell His disciples. This is still a 
troubled morning for them as it has been for you. 
Lost in a maze of sorrow ; the object of their deepest 
love and fondest hopes gone, they know not whither; 
stunned and bewildered, they wander about, desolate 
and aimless orphans. Be you the angels to cheer 
them as I have comforted you. Tell them that Jesus 
is alive and that He loves them still. Tell them to go 
to their Galilean home whence He called them and 
whence they followed Him, and that there amid the 
places of their most loving communion and away from 

?4i 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

the scenes of His humiliation and death, they shall 
see Him. Lo, I have told you ! " 

They need no second telling. The wonderful news 
gives them angels' tongues and almost angels' wings. 
They depart quickly from the sepulchre with fear and 
great joy and run to bring the disciples word. 

That angel of our Lord's resurrection still lives. 
Would it comfort us to find him some day standing in 
his shining garments by the graves of our own loved 
ones, and to have him assure us that they still live, 
albeit their bodies still remain buried ? A surer guide, 
a holier comforter we already have in the ever-present 
Jesus who. Himself the resurrection and the life, bids 
us turn our eyes up from our loved ones' graves to 
the mansions He has gone to prepare for them in 
His Father's house. 

Have we sometimes exclaimed in bitterness of 
anguish, " O Elmwood ; O Woodmere ; O Woodlawn ; 
O Greenwood ; how you mock me with your beauty be- 
cause you are so dumb ! " Taking Jesus with us al- 
ways in these visits of sorrowful remembrance, we 
will say that no more. The friends we mourn are 
with Him who has gone before, in far better than all 
places of even sweetest earthly communion, into heaven 
itself. 

Such is the new, bright chapter in the annals of be- 
reavement which was opened for us and for the world 
by that early-morning walk of the spice-bearing Marys 
to the sepulchre of their risen Lord. 



142 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



SATAN'S FALL FORESEEN. 

A carpenter's apprentice was once asked by his sick 
pastor, at whose house he was then working, to offer 
a prayer at his pastor's bedside. Many a young man 
in such circumstances would, out of natural diffidence, 
have asked to be excused. But that young mechanic 
consented, and so moved was the pastor by his prayer 
that he took the young apprentice into his family and 
educated him for the ministry ; and, as it proved after- 
ward, for missionary work in India. This led that 
same pastor to the establishment of a Manual Train- 
ing School for needy Christian young men, and that 
school, on being removed from Germantown to Easton, 
Pa., became the nucleus of Lafayette College. That 
modest, uneducated carpenter's apprentice saw nothing 
beyond what seemed to him at that time a simple but 
difficult duty ; but what great and far-reaching results 
did Christ foresee then and does the world see now ! 

The mother of Samuel J. Mills dedicated him when 
an infant to Gk)d. Beyond the act itself she did not 
and could not see. But in and beyond that faithful 
mother's act of consecration what did Christ see? 
Looking down the coming years Christ traced the 
career of that infant child; saw him a student in 
Williams College; saw him renewing there his 
mother's act of consecration; dedicating himself to 
foreign missionary work; enlisting a number of his 
fellow-students in the same cause and becoming the 
virtual founder of the American Board of Commis- 

143 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

sioners for Foreign Missions. What did Christ see 
in that mother's simple act of consecration? He saw 
the old and dreadful superstitions of two continents 
reeling to their fall. 

The work done by the Seventy sent out, two and 
two, was far greater than they had themselves been 
at all aware of. They had been wholly taken up with 
the success of their work from day to day, and beyond 
that there was nothing which they could see. But 
Jesus tells them that he saw a great deal more and 
a great deal further. He assures them that their 
humble work done faithfully, although on so small 
a field, was to have a world-wide influence; that it 
would have to do with the complete overthrow of 
the Prince of Darkness in this world ; " Behold," he 
said, " I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven." 

Jesus sees as only Jesus can see, how far any act 
done by him in however humble a way, in however 
humble a sphere, may extend. But he assures us that 
every such act helps toward the utter casting down 
of error and wrong and toward the full and everlasting 
enthronement of truth and righteousness. 

LOVE'S "FINALLY" 

Nearly two-thirds of St. Paul's letter (the Second 
to the Thessalonians) had been taken up with matters 
which concerned the brethren to whom he wrote; not 
a word as yet about himself; about his own labors, 
hardships, dangers and self-denials, although these had 
been so many and so great. So full was his loving 

144 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

heart of concern for his brethren's trials, perils and 
temptations that he had cast about him for that by 
which they might be shielded, comforted and encour- 
aged. Only then does he say " finally " — " for what 
remains," as the original is. As much as to say, " I 
will improve the little time I have left to say a word 
about myself. I need your prayers as much as you 
need mine. Brethren, pray for us." 

In our own letter-writing we are apt to tell about 
ourselves first, apologizing for it, perhaps, at the close. 
But in St. Paul's correspondence we see: 

Love's beautiful postponement of self. 

Then, too, although he does say, " Pray for us," it 
is not after all for himself, but for the great work 
in which he is engaged. He no sooner remembers 
himself than he forgets himself : " Pray for us, that 
the word of the Lord may have free course and be 
glorified." Here we see: 

Love for self losing itself in care for its chosen 
object. 

It is as contributing to this that he asks them to 
pray that he '' may be delivered from unreasonable 
and wicked men " — men '' that have not faith." Here 
we have : 

Lack of faith as that which makes men unreasonable 
and wicked in their treatment of those enthusiastically 
engaged in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus. 

Now comes a quick and happy turn from a merely 
negative deliverance to positive support and assurance 
of success: from men who cannot be relied on for 

145 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

help to One who can : '' The Lord is faithful, who shall 
establish you and keep you from evil '' : or, 

Love's constant, ever-to-he-trusted care of its own. 

This love of God is that to which, above everything 
else, we need to have our hearts " directed/' or (as 
the Greek of it is) " made to go " ; to go, not in 
some round-about, dilatory way, but in a straight or 
direct way, indicating how liable we are to go to God's 
love — the truest, purest and surest of all — by the cir- 
cuit either of lesser human loves or of some form or 
other of impatient, half-doubting legalism. In praying 
that their hearts may be " directed into the love of 
Grod and into patient waiting for Christ," St. Paul 
shows us what is 

Love's most needed, most earnest prayer for those 
whom it would bless. 



146 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

V 

FROM CELL TO SONG 

And what, I said, is this to me 

Who doubt the Hfe it comes to teach, 
But a stray pebble from the beach, 

Worn smooth and oval by the sea ? 

The tiny prison-house, one morn, 
In ruins lay, a shattered shell; 
But joyous out from heaven fell 

A sky-lark's song, and Hope was born. 

BEST OF ALL 

If harvests, health and wealth proclaim, 
And trumpet fitly sound his fame. 
Who grows one grain where he grew none 
Or, growing, grows two grains for one; 

Sure Gabriel's horn must louder blow, 
And glowing hearts must warmer glow. 
When loves, who never loved before. 
Or, loving, loves a little more. 

RECOMPENSE 

Though mute the muzzled ox treads out the corn. 
Nor tosses sheaf or owner with his horn; 
Yet if unmuzzled, gleaning as he stept. 
The old, just mandate were more equal kept. 

147 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 



AT HOME TO STAY 

Where crumbs from shaken napkins fall 
The sparrows come; but, short their stay. 
Pick up their morsels and away 

To sheltering ivy by the wall. 

Where cities spread their tables wide. 
In rush the morning tides of men, 
But evening sees them all again 

Safe wafted to their country side. 

And what is life, dear heart of love, 
But one day's exile of thy toil ? 
And wilt thou from thy task recoil, 

So near to heaven and home above? 



148 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

JUST AS THOU ART 

Just as Thou art ; to me, a child, 
Self-banished and unreconciled, 
To win through patient mercy roild, 
Thou comest, Father, unto me. 

Just as Thou art; without delay. 
Although to rescue me. Thy way 
Grows dark with Calvary's bloody day, 
Thou comest, Jesus, unto me. 

Just as Thou art ; my guilty soul, 
Beyond my struggling will's control. 
To cleanse from sin and make me whole. 
Thou comest. Spirit, unto me. 

Just as Thou art; blest Three in One, 
Accepting as it were my own 
The praise of what is Thine alone, 
Thou comest. Love Divine, to me. 



MY FLOWER-COVERED FOOT-STOOL (A GIFT) 

Quick they forget the toilsome hours, 

And roughness of the way, 
Whose weary feet are kissed by flowers, 
When evening shuts the day. 

149 



THROUGH THE SIEVE 

THE HAYSTACK CENTENNIAL: 1806-1906 

John WicklifJe's bones, when burned to dust, 

And tossed on Avon's tide. 
Lit up with Freedom's phosphor glow 

Earth's oceans, dark and wide. 

Above the night of ignorance 

High rose his Morning Star 
When spoke the Book, which else were dumb. 

In our vernacular. 

Praise Learning's Seat, which holds that Word 

True master of all books, 
Where Science, hand in hand with Faith, 

Beyond the horizon looks. 

Where five brave souls made strong by prayer, 

Their banner wide unfurled. 
Re-heralding the Ascension call, 

"Go, win for Me the World;" 

And plighted troth, with their own hands 

To bear the torch of hope 
To lands that, to the utmost verge. 

In pagan darkness grope. 

The Hoosac to the Hudson runs. 

The Hudson to the sea. 
And tidings of the Cross shall spread 

Wide as the waters be. 
ISO 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A Counterfeit of Life, 35 
A Dishonor to God's Love, 

44 

A Footpath Venture, 64 

"Aha," 40 

A Hidden Danger, 46 

A Lesson in Christian War- 
fare, 107 

A New Chime of Old Bells, 

59 
A Quick Turn from Sorrow 

to Joy, 139 
A Religion of Facts, 93 
A Sure Guide and Goal, 30 
A Test of Power, 8 
An Ingot of Love, 10 
An Original Guest, 71 
An Unsafe Venture, 43 
An Unsuspected Name, 24 
An Unwelcome Gift, 61 
Apart and in Secret, 75 
At Home to Stay (Poem), 

148 

Best of All (Poem), 147 
Beyond Peradventure, ill 
Bible Kakography, 33 
Bible Perspective, 26 

Charitable to Worms, 6 

Climbing, 51 

Common Sense, Faith and 

Ignorance, 89 
Consistency in Wrong, 41 
Created to Good Works, 49 

Deeper than Regret, 7 

Easily Stopped, 34 
Eddy and Stream, no 
Enjoyment following Sur- 
render, 98 
Eyes that See, 28 



Faith Tested by Doubt, 8 
Fancy for Fact, 10 
From Abel to Zacharias, 126 
From Cell to Song (Poem), 
147 

Gain in Beauty; but Loss in 

Power, 35 
Giving Envy the Slip, 24 
God's Love for the Sinless, 7 
Going Through the Motions, 

82 
Growing; Not To, but In 

Grace, 50 

Heaping and Growing, 36 

Hidden Links, 28 

How Cathedrals Do Not 

Grow, and How Lilies Do, 

14 

Inanimation, 15 
Instantaneous Verification, 17 
Intercession for the Ill-De- 
serving, 47 
" Isms " and " Ists," 81 

Just as Thou Art (Poem), 
149 

Life, Lord over Death, 29 
Love's " Finally," 144 

Making the Best of a Mis- 
take, 13 

Neighborliness next to God- 
liness, 59 
New Snuffed, 2 
No Second-birth Suicide, 46 
Not a Hoof Behind, 124 
Not " It," but " I," 54 



153 



INDEX 



Not Complaining, but Next 
Door to It, 7 

Opportunity, the Test of 

Character, 117 
Our One Concern, 133 
Out-of-Place Resolutions, 19 

Paul's Quarrel with Peter, 

121 
Perfect at Last, 70 
Prayer Endings, 104 
Praying Overdone, 17 
Prying Under, 40 

Quitting His Observatory, 57 

Recompense (Poem), 147 
Re-introductions, 112 
Remembered and Forgotten, 
42 

Safety in Truth-telling, 11 
Satan's Fall Foreseen, 143 
Saved, 48 
Saving Himself and His 

Hearers, 108 
Self-harming Haste, 128 
Sifted, 39 
Sight-worship, 2^2 
Something to Eat, 50 

Taking In and Giving Out, 

The Cross, the Symbol of 

Obedience, 114 
The First and Second Births, 

The Haystack Centennial : 

1806-1906 (Poem), 150 
The Impracticables, 11 



The Lower Ennobled by the 

Higher, 79 
The Multitude of the Saved, 

96 
The One Temptation, 55 
The One Thing that Counts, 

52 
The Patience of Growth, 3 
The Pterigium of Prejudice, 

38 
The Right of Way, 34 
The Ring and the Feast, 20 
The Silent Life, 100 
The Spider's Foot, 52 
The Successful Plea, 88 
The Troubleman, 22 
The True Confessional, 19 
The True Master, 23 
The Unchangeable Past, i 
The Weighing of a King, 119 
The World's Yesterday, i 
Three Traveling Compan- 
ions, I 
Turned, but Not Stopped, 2 
Two Summers, 68 

Unfailing and Undiscour- 

aged, 20 
Unused Spices, 85 

Varnish and Vitality, 73 
Vulture and Dove, 77 

Welcome Home, 45 

Weaned, 66 

What Comes from Looking, 

16 
What We Can, 3 
Whirled, 21 
Write to Me about Heaven, 5 



154 



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